lip 







mil 

■ 

III 

nlliiii 
"Mil 



■HP 



mmm 

M 



tftf 



fill 




iipm 



o 'U 






X> 















r , 



x s 

^r V (V 

<£>. ' 7 1 Kl ■ A' 



x: 



,0 c 



* A 



o. 



H 



^ 



s ..V- 



o 



V 






o 



^ v^ 



o 



W 



*5 "^ * 



x0 



,o- 



«5 ^ 






^J 






-^■ x 









. • 




A 



© •> 






^ 




.o- 









V 















0- s 






o x 



~a 



**>.' 



STUDIES IN HISTORY, 
LEGEND & LITERATURE. 



STUDIES 



IN 



HISTORY, LEGEND AND 
LITER A TURE 



BY 



H. SCHUTZ WILSON 

AUTHOR OF 

STUDIES AND ROMANCES,' 'ALPINE ASCENTS AND ADVENTURER,' 
.'THE TOWER AND THE SCAFFOLD,' ETC., ETC., ETC. 



GRIFFITH & FARRAN 

SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS 

WEST CORNER ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON 
E. P. DUTTON & CO;, NEW YORK 
1884 



•Wis 



10 



[The Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.] 



THIS VOLUME 



is 



BY PERMISSION 

4p t ti i c a i e b 



TO 



J. A. FROUDE, Esq., 

M.A., Etc., Etc. 



N O T E 



^ H E Studies in this volume, on the subjects of 

Lucrezia Borgia, 

Struensee and Caroline Mathilde, 

Elizabeth Stuart, 

Eppelein von Gailingen, and 

Goethe's Faust, 
have appeared in the Nineteenth Century, 
Cornhill Magazine, and the Westminster and 
Modern Reviews ; and are here reproduced 
(after due revision) by permission of the 
respective editors, 

The Essay on Madame Roland has not 
appeared in any periodical. 



STUDIES IN HISTORY, 
LEGEND & LITERATURE 



LUCRE ZI A BORGIA. 



I. — R O M E. 

Vilest things 
Become themselves in her ; that the holy priests 
Bless her, when she is riggish. 

Antony and Cleopatra. 

ONDON is an instance of an old city rebuilt 
in modern times mainly by casing over the 
new above the old. The ancient sites remain, but 
the olden houses disappear ; and in their places newer 
buildings, less picturesque possibly, though perhaps 
better suited to present needs, rise and rear their 
modern faces. The quaint and stately olden houses, 
which expressed the ideas and satisfied the needs 
of bygone states of society, vanish, and their place 
knows them no more. 

A 



2 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

So it is, in some instances, with history. Deeper 
knowledge of facts, readier access to old archives 
and records, a profounder insight into character, a 
nobler care for truth, have erected fairer structures 
on the very site of the olden habitations, and the 
new picture is painted over the former one. Perhaps 
the greatest instance of true historical rehabilitation 
is that of the character of Cromwell by Carlyle. 
The lampoons of the Restoration, the malignity of 
partisanship, the rarity of that profound insight 
which alone can worthily estimate a man so great 
as Cromwell, had combined to produce a caricature 
of the great Protector which was popularly accepted 
as a portrait till Carlyle came, and saw, and con- 
quered. Upon a basis of exhaustive study, his 
profound and poetical insight penetrated to the 
very depths and mysteries of a nature so complex 
and so heroic : he saw that the deeds of Cromwell 
were the true outcome of his inner nature ; and 
Carlyle recognised, through his own nobleness, the 
noble soul that he restored to history. There have 
been other instances of similar service, though I have 
no space to analyse them here. Still, Mr Froude's 
essay towards painting over the old popular portrait, 
current in our childhood, of Henry the Eighth, may 
be cited as another, and as a comparatively success- 
ful study in modern historical rehabilitation. 

It may be said that the great poet is the best 
historian. The materials for a living portrait of 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 3 

Greek Cleopatra were not clearly ample, were 
scanty rather than suggestive ; but see how Shak- 
speare has fused all hints into a round and perfect 
whole ; has, with the seeing eye of genius, looked 
into every phase of character and witchery of 
charm ; and has presented through art to history 
a complete portraiture of the subtle and sumptuous 
serpent of Old Nile. Carlyle is a great historian 
because he also is a poet. 

Rehabilitation is one thing, and mere ' white- 
washing,' or covering over an existing portrait with 
the thick opaque plaster of sentimental negation, 
is another. Both processes are known to us in the 
present day. Great men re-create, and small men re- 
confuse. The success of the great ones tempts little 
men to their ruin ; and criticism, which applauds true 
effort, should also expose mistaken sentiment. 

An attempt has recently been made by a German 
writer, Herr Ferdinand Gregorovius, to repaint the 
character of Lucrezia Borgia. Analysis will enable 
us to judge whether his essay should be classified 
as rehabilitation or as whitewashing. Certain it is 
that his work possesses enough of merit, and enough 
of interest, to claim careful consideration. The 
popular estimate of Lucrezia Borgia is forcibly 
embodied in the drama of Victor Hugo and in the 
opera of Donizetti. The French poet is, as a 
dramatist, very indifferent to historic truth ; a fact 
which may easily be verified by a reference to his 



4 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

portraiture of Cromwell. Gregorovius, indeed, says 
that Hugo has been solely intent, in his drama of 
Lucrezia Borgia, ' ein moralisches Ungeheuer fur den 
BiihnenefTect zu Stande zu bringen ; ■ nor is the 
charge without foundation. In both opera and drama 
the popular conception of the character and deeds 
of the Duchess of Ferrara has been adapted to 
loosely imagined plots calculated only to produce 
effect upon the stage. In both productions Lucrezia 
appears, with eyes of baleful meaning gleaming 
through the mystery of a mask, with hands which 
grasp the dagger and the bowl, and with an indomit- 
ably wicked will which treads ruthlessly upon human 
lives in a dark progress from crime to crime. En- 
vironed by human hate, bearing a name which of 
itself excites a shudder and a loathing, the inflexible 
criminal hesitates at no wickedness which seems, 
calculated to attain her purpose, and is only in so 
far not a mere monster that she murders in order 
to reach distinct ends and aims. 

No monograph about Lucrezia Borgia is possible. 
Lucrezia cannot be drawn without reference to her 
dreadful father and to her terrible brother. m As well 
might you attempt to depict Othello without reference 
to Iago. The three form a demoniac triumvirate of 
materialism, of superstition, of crime ; and the dark 
sinister figures stand out with terrible distinctness 
from the surroundings of the Vatican and the back- 
ground of the Roman Catholic Church. Herr Grego- 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 5 

rovius even attempts no palliation of Alexander or 
of Caesar ; although actuated possibly by 

The gallantry of man 
In lovelier woman's cause ; 

and, relying upon certain weaknesses of evidence, he 
labours hard to bring about a verdict of, at least, 
k not proven/ in favour of Lucrezia. A frame will 
indifferently surround any picture. The picture 
may be true or false, good or bad. Its subject or 
its merits may be what they will ; but the frame 
recks not of the thing it shall contain, and the 
Church of the Renaissance framed with entire in- 
difference any crime or any criminal. The psycho- 
logical interest of the Borgia triumvirate is deepened 
by their close connexion with the Roman Church. 
They form historical problems, and are indissolubly 
connected with the morbid pathology of romance. 
They illustrate the period to which they so intensely 
belonged. They are, indeed, the most pregnant 
embodiments of the early Renaissance in Italy ; and 
no attempt, like that of Gregorovius, to set aside 
the contemporary verdict which time has long en- 
dorsed, especially if such attempt profess to be based 
upon Urkunden und Correspondenzen — that is, upon the 
discovery of original documents and letters — should 
be allowed to pass without critical examination. 

It may, at starting, be said, without unfairness to 
Herr Gregorovius, that he is rather an advocate 
than a judge. He seeks, at times, to snatch a ver- 



6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

diet for his client, by ignoring some, and even con- 
fusing other evidence. He speaks, in places, by in- 
nuendo instead of clear declaration ; and he is — 
although perhaps unconsciously — a partisan. The 
historian who does not speak clearly, or who evades 
the full responsibility of his position, resembles the 
cuttle-fish which exudes ink with a view to secrete 
its personality; and Herr Gregorovius not unfre- 
quently shrouds his meaning in a maze of words. 
He relies too much upon his newly-discovered do- 
cuments, although they do not always bear out his 
conclusions ; and he ignores too, persistently, con- 
temporary historians — as, for instance, the well- 
known Istoria d' Italia di Messer Francesco Guic- 
ciardini. Guicciardini, born 1482 (within two years 
of the birth of Lucrezia), was, in the strictest sense, 
a contemporary historian, and was well acquainted 
with all contemporary sources of information. He 
was informed of all the mass of oral testimony of 
the day ; and knew thoroughly that great floating 
body, form, and pressure of belief and knowledge 
which filled the very air of the land and time ; 
which, in the absence of newspapers, and of all 
written and published journalistic history, is so in- 
valuable to the student of problematical characters 
whose high places in the world throw a hush of 
silence round their path of unbridled passion and 
unchecked crime. Guicciardini throws light upon 
many a passage which Herr Gregorovius leaves 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 7 

very dark ; and I find it useful to refer constantly 
to the quaint, though long-winded, old historian while 
considering the work of the later German writer. 

Before we decide upon the policy of exchanging 
old lamps for new, before we consider specially the 
distinct issue raised by Herr Gregorovius, it will 
be convenient to place before the reader a short 
resume — stated, of course, with the utmost possible 
brevity — of the leading facts in the careers of the 
Borgian triumvirate. If we know what a man is 
we know what he will do. The mysteries of char- 
acter, especially in connexion with human beings 
who lived so long ago, are most easily penetrated 
when we have before us, seen from a bird's-eye 
view, a picture (as clearly painted as may be) of 
their lives and times, of their position and action, 
and of the Zeit-Kolorit which surrounded their ex- 
istence. The family of Borja, or Borgia, is of 
Spanish descent. The flattering science of heraldry 
failed, when Rodrigo had become Pope, to trace 
the then all-powerful house to any very noble origin ; 
but the founder of the family in Italy was Alfonso 
Borgia, who, born in Valencia in 1378, was in the 
service of King Alfonso of Arragon, and became 
Bishop of Valencia. This Alfonso was made a 
Cardinal in 1444, and in 1455 was raised to the Papal 
chair as Calixtus the Third. He was a vigorous 
opponent of the Council of Basel, and of the early 
German efforts towards the Reformation. His ne- 



8 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

phew, Rodrigo Borgia, then twenty-five years old, 
became a Cardinal in 1456. 

The Borgias, as a race, were gifted with rare 
physical strength and beauty; were distinguished 
by intellectual force, by strong and ruthless wills, 
and by an absence of conscience. The Papacy is not, 
of course, an hereditary office ; and it is noteworthy 
that, in very many instances, when a man became 
pope, he made the greatest exertions, during his life- 
time, to found a dynasty in the Church, and to amass 
wealth and to accumulate power in his own family. 

Calixtus the Third died in 1458 ; and was succeeded 
by Pius the Second, Paul the Second, Sixtus the 
Fourth, Innocent the Eighth. During the reign of 
Pius the Second, we get a very characteristic glimpse 
of Cardinal Rodrigo, then twenty-nine years old. He 
was in Siena, and the Pope wrote him a strong 
Mahnbrief, a letter of reproof and warning (1460) 
touching his life and conversation, and adverting par- 
ticularly to one orgie, concerning which the Holy 
Father remarks ' that shame will not allow him to 
recount all that was there done/ Rodrigo was 
then already distinguished for that boundless sen- 
suality which characterised his whole life. Gasparo 
of Verona, writing a few years later, describes Rod- 
rigo as ' very handsome, of pleasant and cheerful 
bearing, gifted with sweet and elegant eloquence. 
Whenever he meets with charming women, he ex- 
cites love in them in an almost magical way, and 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 9 

he attracts them to himself more strongly than the 
magnet does the iron.' 

His pJiysique must have been splendid. All the 
powers of the body were balanced in perfect har- 
mony. His health was so fine that he was always 
cheerful and gay. It is recorded of him in his 
later days that ' Nothing causes him trouble. He 
grows younger every day.' Crime even could not 
trouble him through conscience. Judging from their 
lives, it is natural to imagine the members of the 
Borgia triumvirate dark, gloomy, and sinister. No 
conception can be more false. The men were 
splendidly handsome ; the women singularly lovely. 
All were gay and charming. Caesar's handsome 
face may, indeed, have been distorted for the time 
into something fiercely hellish or infra-human when 
actually engaged in some of his more violent deeds 
of blood ; but the deed once happily completed, the 
face would recover its smooth serenity, and the eye 
its steady light. They were happy as handsome. 

The sensuous vitalism of Cardinal Borgia gave a 
fresh proof of its magnetism, when, in 1466 or 1467, 
he met Vanozza Catanei in Rome. Vanozza is, it 
may be remarked, the i caressing ' version of the 
name of Giovanna. Of the family or descent of 
Vanozza nothing is certainly known ; but it is known 
that she was born in 1442 in Rome, and that she 
fell a victim (probably a willing victim) to the 
seductive arts of the cardinal. A sensual nature 



IO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

framed in voluptuous beauty ; strong will, and cunning 
sense — though unaccompanied by culture — enabled 
her to obtain great ascendency over her cardinal 
lover; and her hold upon him must have been 
strong, since, during the activity of the liaison, the 
number of his bastards by other women was in- 
considerable. The children of Rodrigo and Vanozza 
were: Caesar, born 1476; Juan, born 1474; Goffredo 
born 1 48 1 ; and Lucrezia, born w r hen her father was 
forty-nine and her mother thirty-eight, on the 18th 
of April 1480. After the birth of Lucrezia, Rodrigo 
married Vanozza to Giorgio della Croce, and Van- 
ozza's future children were ascribed to her husband. 

Upon the death of her first husband, the lady 
married, in i486, Carlo Canale. Vanozza lived in 
great comfort, in a house on the Piazza Pizzo di 
Merlo, distant only a few steps from the palace of 
the cardinal, and situated near the Bridge of Sant 
Angelo and the Vatican. Rodrigo Borgia was one 
of the richest princes of the Church. His cardinal's 
income was added to by high offices in the Church/ 
by many abbacies in Italy and Spain, by the three 
bishoprics of Portus, Carthago, and Valencia, and 
by his Vice-Chancellorship. He was one of the 
most successful of churchmen. In the year 1482, 
we find Rodrigo admitting the paternity of Girolama, 
Hieronyma, Pietro, Lodovico, and Giovanni di Borgia ; 
also of another daughter, Isabella. The mother, or 
mothers, of these bastards have not been identified ; 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. I I 

but Vanozza was not among them. Some of the 
above-named children were older than the Catanei 
family. Rodrigo provided splendidly for all his 
offspring. Guicciardini records, as a distinctive trait 
of Rodrigo, that whereas other popes and cardinals 
had always decently termed their illegitimate children 
nipoti, he openly, in legal documents, declarations, 
and correspondence, called his figliuoli, and figliuole. 

The time, says Gregorovius, in which Lucrezia 
was born, must, in truth, be termed terrible. The 
Papacy had thrown off all pretence to priestly 
holiness, and was, politically, the most tyrannical and 
immoral of despotisms. Religion had become alto- 
gether materialised ; and unbridled immorality was 
the law of manners. Wild war raged in the city of 
Rome between certain of the great houses ; while, in 
1480, the factions of Guelf and Ghibelline began 
their struggles. Savelli and Colonna were enemies 
of the Pope, but the Orsini were his furious partisans. 
A godless and inhuman time was that of the c pro- 
blem of civilisation,' the Renaissance, in Rome and 
in Italy, at the close of the fifteenth and the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century. Savonarola's burning 
denunciations were well warranted by facts. 

Lucrezia's first years were undoubtedly passed in 
the house of her mother ; but while still in her girl- 
hood she w r as transferred by her father to the care 
of Madonna Adriana, daughter of Don Pedro, a 
nephew of Calixtus the Third, and cousin of Rodrigo 



12 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Borgia. He married this lady to Lodovico, Lord of 
Bassanello, a member of the great house of Orsini, 
who died before 1489. Adriana, as a widow, in- 
habited one of the Orsini palaces in Rome. She had 
one son, Orsino Orsini, by her husband Lodovico. 

Cardinal Rodrigo lived in closest intimacy with 
Madonna Adriana. She remained, until his death, 
the confidante of his crimes and his amours, his 
assistant in all his plans and intrigues ; and knew 
better, perhaps, than any other person, the terrible 
secrets of the Vatican. Gregorpvius presents us 
with an admirable picture of the state of female 
culture in the Italy of the Renaissance. That which 
we now call a 'blue-stocking' was then termed a 
* virago ; ' and the appellation of a ' man-woman ' 
was complimentary. Lady Jane Grey was found 
reading Plato ; and the women of the time were, 
perforce, in the comparative absence of a great 
modern literature, driven back to the languages and 
literature of the two great cultured nations of 
antiquity. * Style, 5 alike in speaking as in writing, 
in oratory as in composition, was the fashion of the 
day. The limited field of study made the renowned 
woman of the Renaissance in Italy — as Cassandra 
Fedeli, Ginevra Sforza, Ippolita Sforza — thorough 
in their knowledge ; nor do they, as a consequence 
of learning, forego feminine charm and grace. Gre- 
^orovius even maintains that their education was 
superior to that of women in our day, even in much 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. I 3 

vaunted Germany. He says of his countrywomen, 
that their culture is now wholly superficial, baseless, 
and scientifically valueless ; that they learn only two 
modern Conversations - Sprachen and something of 
pianoforte playing, accomplishments to which they 
devote an undue amount of time. 

Devotion to the Church was the basis of the 
training of Italian women of the Renaissance. The 
aim was, not to awaken the heart, or elevate the 
soul, but to produce mechanical religious obedience 
and observance. Shelley says, in the admirable piece 
of definition prefaced to the tragedy of the Cenci, 
that religion, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, 
' is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind ad- 
miration ; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no 
necessary connexion with any one virtue. The 
most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and, 
without any shock to established faith, confess him- 
self to be so. Religion is, according to the temper 
of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a per- 
suasion, an excuse, a refuge ; never a check.' This 
passage will help us to understand the problem of 
the Borgias. Lucrezia was carefully brought up in 
religion of this sort ; but her youth could scarcely 
have been exposed to worse moral influences. 

Her father, the voluptuous cardinal, engaged, in 
1489, in the most notorious of his many amours. 
Giulia Farnese, a young girl of a beauty so distinc- 
tive that she was called La Bella, married, on the 



14 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

2 ist of May 1489, Orsino Orsini, the son of Madonna 
Adriana. The marriage fetes took place in the 
palace of Cardinal Borgia. She was then fifteen, 
and he was fifty-eight years old. Giulia, like Lu- 
crezia, had golden hair, and must have been of a 
surpassing loveliness. She inflamed the passions 
of the magnetic cardinal, and within two years after 
her marriage became the acknowledged mistress of 
Rodrigo Borgia, receiving from the irreverent the 
titles of the * Concubine of the Pope ' and the * Bride 
of Christ' Her husband was suitably provided for 
away from Rome, and Giulia and Lucrezia lived 
with Adriana, who, in consequence of her compliant 
assistance, became the most influential person in the 
house of Borgia. She favoured Rodrigo's adulter- 
ous connexion with the wife of her own son, and 
was surely worthy of her hire. The fortunes of the 
Farnese family were founded by the fair, if erring, 
Giulia. 

In 1491, her father first thought of arranging a 
marriage for Lucrezia, then eleven years old ; and 
the husband selected for her was Don Cherubin 
Juan de Centelles, of Valencia, the brother of the 
Count Oliva. The marriage contract was drawn up, 
but Rodrigo, from causes not mentioned by historians, 
suddenly broke off the projected marriage. 

In 1492, Rodrigo Borgia attained the great object 
of his ambition, and became Pope. Innocent the 
Eighth died the 25th of July 1492, and the choice of 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. I 5 

his successor lay between four candidates, Rafael 
Riario, Guiliano della Rovere, Ascanio Sforza, and 
Rodrigo Borgia. 

The Papal chair was ultimately sold to the highest 
bidder ; and that was Rodrigo Borgia, who reigned 
and is known in the annals of the Papacy as Alex- 
ander the Sixth. 

Giacomo Trotti, the Ferrarese ambassador, wrote, 
28th of August 1492, to Duke Ercole : 'Cum simonia 
et mille ribalderie et inhonestate si e venduto il 
Pontificato che e cosa ignominiosa et detestabile ! ' 
France and Spain weakly, Venice strongly, opposed 
the election ; but all the states of Italy accepted the 
new Pope ; and Rodrigo Borgia, once in the saddle, 
was not a man to be easily dislodged. 

Perhaps no man ever looked the part better than 
did Pope Alexander the Sixth as he received hom- 
age after his election. His stately figure and ma- 
jestic head, his noble bearing and eyes, triumphant 
indeed, but full of strong, clear will and purpose, his 
manner composed and yet awful, must have made 
him appear the theatrical ideal of a pope. His grace- 
ful way of giving his benediction to the admiring 
populace, as he rode upon his snow-white horse to 
the Church of Sta Maria del Popolo, enhanced the 
value of that singular blessing. 

Vanozza and Giulia must have triumphed in the 
triumph of their lover. The Pope soon thought out 
another husband for his favourite daughter. She was 



1 6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

contracted to Don Gasparo, the son of Don Giovanni 
Francesco di Procida, Count of Aversa. But this 
project was thrown aside in favour of a union with 
Giovanni Sforza, Count of Cotognola and sovereign 
lord of Pesaro. Sforza was a widower. His first wife 
was Maddalena, the sister of Elisabetta Gonzaga. 
Maddalena died the 8th of August 1490, in childbirth. 
Sforza, who was twenty-six years old, was tall and 
good-looking. His face is noble, but gives no im- 
pression of weight of will or commanding intellect. 
He was an independent sovereign ruler, and had 
political value as a member of the great house of 
Sforza, with which the house of Borgia was then 
intimately allied. 

On the day of his coronation, the new Pope made 
his son Caesar, sixteen years of age, Bishop of Val- 
encia. The Vatican was crowded with the friends 
and relatives of the all-powerful Borgia. ' Not ten 
Papacies would suffice to satisfy all that mob,' wrote, 
in November 1492, Gianandrea Boccaccio to the 
Duke of Ferrara. Alessandro Farnese, brother of 
the ' Bride of Christ/ was made a cardinal, as was 
Juan Borgia, son of the Pope's sister. Alexander 
was certainly liberal towards, his children, relatives, 
and supporters. 

Alfonso, the heir of Ferrara, was, in 1492, in Rome,, 
and made the acquaintance of Lucrezia. Neither 
could have thought at that time that he would, be- 
come, nine years later, her third husband. Alfonso 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 1 7 

was then the husband of Anna Sforza, and Lucrezia 
was about to marry Giovanni Sforza. The proud, 
house of Este was one of the noblest in Italy. 
Alfonso's mother was Eleonora of Arragon, daugh- 
ter of King Ferdinand of Naples. She died 1493. 
His sister Beatrice had married Lodovico il Moro, 
of Milan ; and his other sister, Isabella, one of the 
loveliest and most learned women of the day — a true 
virago — had married, in 1490, Francesco Gonzaga of 
Mantua. Alfonso of Este was a witness of the pre- 
parations for the marriage of Lucrezia. 

Lucrezia married Giovanni Sforza in Rome on the 
1 2th of June 1493 ; and Madonna Giulia Farnese — 
4 de qua est tantus sermo,' says the Ferrarese ambas- 
sador — graced the nuptials with her presence. 

The Duke of Gandia had married, in Spain, Donna 
Maria Enriquez, of noble Valencian family. The 
exact date of this marriage is not known, but it is 
supposed to have taken place at the end of 1492. 
The Duke left Rome to return to Spain on the 4th of 
August 1493. On the 16th, Goffredo, the youngest of 
the Catanei- Borgia children, was married, by procura- 
tion, to Donna Sancia, a natural daughter of the then 
Duke of Calabria. Caesar Borgia was made cardinal 
on the 20th of September 1493. On the same day, 
Ippolito of Este and Alessandro Farnese received 
the red hat. The latter was termed, with reference 
to his sister's position, the apron-cardinal.' In 1492 
Giulia Farnese had made his Holiness the happy father 

B 



1 8 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

of a daughter, christened Laura. Her husband was liv- 
ing in Bassanello. The Pope appointed Giulia first lady 
of the Court of his daughter, Lucrezia. A remarkable 
letter of Lorenzo Pucci, dated the 24th of December 
1493, gives us a picture of the house in Sta Maria 
in Portico, which was the palace of Lucrezia, where 
she lived with Madonna Adriana and Madonna Giulia. 
Pucci's object was to obtain the assistance of the 
latter towards procuring for him some Papal post, 
and his request was graciously granted. Madonna 
Giulia showed him her child, and Pucci remarks that 
the infant strongly resembled the Pope, ' adeo ut vere 
ex ejus semine orta dici possit.' Madonna Giulia then 
let fall her golden rain of hair, which reached down to 
her feet. Pucci was enchanted with her beauty. 
Madonna Lucrezia went out and changed her dress, 
returning in another splendid costume of violet-blue 
velvet. The three Papal ladies sat by the fire, and 
chatted gaily with their delighted visitor, who left 
them at vespers, and has left to us a letter which 
gives a glimpse of the interior, and the interior life, 
of Lucrezia's Roman palace. 

Don Goffredo, now Prince of Squillace, in Naples, 
married there, on the 7th of May 1494, Donna Sancia ; 
and her father, owing to the death of King Ferdinand, 
ascended the throne of Naples on the same day. 

In consequence of a pestilence in Rome, Sforza car- 
ried his wife to Pesaro ; and, at the request of the 
Pope, they took with them Giulia and Adriana. This 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 1 9 

occurred probably in May or June 1494. The union 
of Lucrezia with Sforza was childless ; but I cannot 
find a word of clear evidence to prove whether it were 
loving or loveless. Freed from the gloom of Rome 
and the dark shadow of the Vatican, her residence in 
her husband's beautiful palace at Pesaro must have 
been for Lucrezia a time of calm and quiet. It was 
her first escape from family domination, and from 
the school of vice in which her youth had been 
passed. 

In September 1494, Charles the Eighth marched 
into Italy, and this invasion had one romantic con- 
sequence. The Holy Father, writing to Lucrezia, re- 
commended her to pray constantly to the Virgin, and 
expressed great displeasure at the long absence of 
Adriana and Giulia. They w r ere therefore sent back 
to him, but on the way were seized by an advanced 
corps of the French army. 

The Pope was beside himself with rage and anguish. 
The French captain, ignorant, perhaps, of the import- 
ance of his prisoners, demanded a ransom of 3000 
ducats, and was laughed at by Lodovico il Moro, 
who said that his Holiness would willingly have paid 
50,000 ducats, and that his ladies should have been 
detained as hostages to insure the political good con- 
duct of the Pope. The 3000 ducats were paid at 
once ; and when Giulia and Adriana returned to 
Rome, the old Pope rode out on horseback to meet 
what he termed ' his eyes and his heart, 5 attired as a 



20 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

cavalier, wearing sword and dagger, Spanish boots, a 
black velvet doublet brocaded with gold, and a velvet 
barret cap. The infatuated old lover behaved like a 
young gallant. Always supremely indifferent to 
'public opinion,' he openly defied its censures by 
his public conduct at the Einholung of his female 
friends. 

Even a Papal despotism is a despotism tempered 
by epigrams. Lodovico told Trotti, the ambassador, 
that while Adriana and Giulia were absent, the Pope 
had sent for three women, one from Valencia, the 
second from Castille, and the third, a particularly fine 
girl, of fifteen or sixteen years of age, from Venice. 
'Man spricht hier in Mailand,' says Ambassador 
Trotti, through Gregorovius' translation, ' offentlich 
liber diesen Papst solche Schmahungen aus, wie man 
sie etwa in Ferrara iiber den Torta auslassen wurde.' 

In 1496, the Holy Father had all his Catanei chil- 
dren around him in Rome — the Duke of Gandia, the 
Cardinal Caesar ; and the Prince of Squillace, with his 
fair young wife, Donna Sancia ; Lucrezia and her 
husband being also there. Sancia and Lucrezia held 
two separate, but splendid, Nipoti Courts in their 
respective palaces. 

Donna Sancia caused the loudest scandal. Married 
to an immature boy — a sort of Italian Darnley — the 
least gifted of all the race of Borgia ; she, beautiful 
and licentious, feeling herself the daughter of a king, 
lived in Rome a flagrantly voluptuous life. Young 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 21 

nobles, and Cardinal Ippolito of Este, were reported 
to be her lovers ; and it was confidently stated, and 
generally believed, that her brothers-in-laws, Irian and 
Caesar, were honoured by her favours. Lucrezia, 
though more circumspect, yet 'lived like the others.' 
She was, says Gregorovius, neither better nor worse 
than the rest. Fond of pleasure and of luxury, she 
sank completely into the ordinary life of a Borgia. 
The Courts of the times of Louis the Fourteenth and 
Fifteenth, of Augustus of Saxony, of Charles the 
Second, w r ere dissolute enough ; but none of these can 
at all be compared with the ruthless energy of crime, 
alternating with unbridled licence of passion, which 
distinguishes to special infamy the bastard's Courts 
which then flourished under the shadow of the seat of 
St Peter. 

Lucrezia's first marriage was dissolved by violence 
and fraud, and with infamy. At Easter 1497, Sforza 
returned from serving as a condottiere in the army of 
Naples, and we find it recorded that, as son-in-law 
of Alexander the Sixth, he, together with Caesar and 
Gandia, received from the hands of the Holy Father 
Easter palm branches in St Peter's. Shortly after, 
the Pope required of Sforza that he should consent 
to have his marriage annulled, and upon his refusal 
he was threatened with death. 

One evening Giacomino, the chamberlain of Sforza, 
overheard a conversation between Caesar and Lucrezia. 
Caesar spoke freely to his sister, and told her that he 



22 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

had determined upon the murder of her husband. 
Hearing of this conversation, Sforza at once mounted 
his Turkish horse, and rode, in four and twenty 
hours, with ' loose rein and bloody spur ' to Pesaro. 
Arrived there, the horse dropped dead. 

This sudden flight saved the life of Lucrezia's 
husband, but was highly distasteful to the Pope and 
the Cardinal. If Sforza had remained in Rome, his 
marriage would have been effectually annulled by 
his murder ; but in Pesaro he was safe, and the Pope 
was compelled to institute legal proceedings for a 
divorce on the alleged ground of nullity of marriage. 
Lucrezia seems to have lied freely, and to have sub- 
mitted passively to the execution of the scheme of 
her father and her brother. In connexion with this 
divorce Messer Guicciardini affords evidence of value. 
He says : — 

Era medesimamente fa ma (se pero e degna di credersi tanta 
enormita) che nell' amore di Madonna Lucrezia concorressero 
non solamente i due fratelli, ma eziandio il padre medesimo ; il 
quale avendola, come fu fatto Pontefice, levata dal primo marito 
come diventato inferiore al suo grado, e maritatala a Giovanni 
Sforza, Signore di Pesaro ; non comportando d'avere anche il 
marito per rivale dissolve il matrimonio gia consumato ; avendo 
fatto inanzi ai giudici delagati da lui provare con false testi- 
monianze, a dipoi coniermare per sentenza, che Giovanni era 
per natura frigido e impotente. 

The alleged cause for the dissolution of the mar- 
riage is transparently false. Sforza was married 
before he married Lucrezia ; he married again after 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 23 

his divorce from her ; and he had issue by both these 
marriages. Lodovico il Moro, a rough, practical 
man, proposed that Sforza should give public proof 
of the falsity of the charge brought against him. 
Meanwhile, the Pope, who did not hesitate to play 
with the sacramentsj^of the ChurchJ succeeded in 
obtaining (December 20, 1497) the[divorce which he 
desired. Of Lucrezia's real feelings in the matter 
there is no evidence whatever. Certain it is that she 
did not oppose — nay, that she assisted — the steps 
taken in Rome to annul her first marriage. A true 
woman of the Renaissance, r she|was full of beauty 
and of culture, of courage and intellect, of lust and 
cruelty ; and it seems probable that her life never 
knew a real love or a true 7 ! passion. Between her 
divorce and her next marriage she was, according to 
Sannazaro and Pontano, ' a measureless Hetaira ; ! 
and, during this period, an ambassador reports : — 
j La Roma accertasi che la figliola del Papa ha 
partorito.' The report spread, and the satires 
written about Lucrezia at this period were, it is 
certain, well known in Ferrara. 

Giovanni Sforza proclaimed aloud in all the courts 
of Italy the real causes of his flight, his intended 
murder, and his divorce. 

Matarazzo relates that Sforza had discovered, after 
his return from Naples, the triple incest of his wife, 
and that this discovery led to the action of the Pope 
and the Cardinal. 



24 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

About this time, Hieronymus Porcius, the Infalli- 
bilist, wrote maintaining the doctrine of the Papal 
infallibility, and asserting that he only is a Christian 
who worships and blindly obeys the Pope. To a 
hypercritical intellect it would almost seem that the 
theory of Papal infallibility, when applied to Alex- 
ander the Sixth, is subjected to some slight strain. 

Alexander intended to promote the welfare of his 
eldest son, Gandia, in the world, and that of his 
second son, Caesar, in the Church ; he gave temporal 
benefits to Gandia, ecclesiastical benefits to Caesar. 
But this arrangement was wholly unsatisfactory to 
Caesar, whose ambition desired the crown of Naples, 
or the establishment of a kingdom of Middle Italy. 
Hence jealousy and ill-will between the brothers, 
rivals alike in love as in ambition. Hence the 
murder of Gandia by his Cain-like brother, Caesar. 
The brothers supped together at the house of their 
mother ; Caesar reached home safely, but Gandia 
never returned, and his murdered corpse was found 
in the Tiber. Guicciardini says of this event, and of 
Caesar Borgia, that ' non potendo tollerare che questo 
luogo gli fosse occupato dal fratello ; impaziente 
oltre a questo ch'egli avesse piu parte di lui neir 
amore di Madonna Lucrezia, sorella comune, incitato 
dalla libidine, e dall' ambizione, lo fece una notte,' 
etc. The Pope ignored the deed, and screened the 
offender. None but secret inquiry was made into the 
murder of Gandia ; but all Rome knew the truth. 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 2$ 

The Ferrarese ambassador writes : — c Di novo ho 
inteso come della morte del Duca di Gandia fu 
causa il Cardinale suo fratello.' The Pope virtually 
made himself the accomplice of his son's Cain-like 
crime. Shortly after the murder of Gandia, Caesar's 
relations with Donna Sancia became open and un- 
disguised. Lucrezia withdrew, for a time, to the 
convent of S. Sisto, in the Via Appia. The motive 
assigned was her desire for a temporary religious 
retirement ; but very other reasons were generally 
believed to have dictated the step ; reasons which, 
says Donato Aretino, writing from Rome, on June 4, 
to the Cardinal Ippolito in Ferrara, * cannot be trusted 
to a letter.' 

Having cleared the way by the murder of his elder 
brother, Caesar Borgia desired to quit the Church, 
and to enter upon a career of active temporal 
ambition ; and it was proposed to make Goffredo 
cardinal in the place of Caesar. The Pope projected 
a marriage between Caesar — then a cardinal — and 
Carlotta, daughter of King Federigo of Naples ; but 
this proposal was rejected with indignation by the 
Court of Naples. The schemes of the Borgias for 
obtaining a footing in, and ultimately the crown of, 
Naples, led to Lucrezia's second marriage. On the 
2 1st of July 1498, she wedded, in the Vatican, Don 
Alfonso, Prince of Salerno, Duke of Biselli, brother 
of Donna Sancia, and natural son of Alfonso the 
Second of Naples. He was seventeen, and Lucrezia 



26 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

was eighteen years of age. The young Alfonso must 
well have known the infamous reputation of the 
woman whom he was compelled to marry. He was 
the handsomest youth, says Talini, that had ever 
been seen in Rome ; but he was melancholy, silent, 
passive ; and had in his face and manner something 
of that deep, still, inner dejection which, according 
to popular superstition, is seen in those doomed to 
a violent death. The Mantuan agent reported in 
August that Lucrezia had a real liking for her 
second husband. 

On the 13th of August 1498, the most terrible of 
the Borgias, Caesar, resigned his cardinal's hat, and 
soon after went to France, where he was created by 
Louis the Twelfth Duke of Valentinois, and where, in 
May 1499, he married Charlotte d'Albret, sister of 
the King of Navarre. 

In 1499, Alfonso fled suddenly from Rome. His 
reasons were no doubt good, and he probably saved 
his life by flight. He left Lucrezia pregnant, and 
she is said to have wept his absence. Alfonso would 
seem to have been the one man who could elicit 
such tenderness as she may have possessed. Her 
father was rendered furious by the flight of Alfonso, 
and commanded his daughter to recall her husband. 
Did she know of his flight, or know the reasons 
which impelled him to fly? Here we know nothing. 
She wrote, but Alfonso did not return ; and the Pope 
sent his daughter, as regent, to Spoleto. In Nepi, 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 2/ 

Alfonso rejoined his wife, who was also regent of 
that place. On the 14th of October 1499, Lucrezia 
and her husband returned to Rome ; and on the 1st 
of November she gave birth to a son, christened 
Rodrigo, after the Pope. The paternity of this child 
is generally ascribed to the Duke of Biselli. Caesar 
Borgia was busy with his campaigns of conquest in 
the Romagna. 

Guicciardini states that, in 1500, Alexander the 
Sixth had * quest' anno creati con grandissima 
infamia dodici cardinal i, non de' piu benemeriti, ma 
•di quegli che gli offersero prezzo maggiore.' Giulia 
Farnese was, according to Vasari, by command of 
His Holiness, painted by Pinturicchio as the Blessed 
Virgin in a picture of the Madonna and Child. 

In 1500, Alexander was seriously hurt by the fall 
of a chimney in the Vatican. He was nursed and 
tended by Lucrezia, and by one of the ladies of her 
court who was a ■ favourite ' of the Pope — then 
seventy years of age. He ascribed his safety to the 
protection of the Virgin, to whom he presented a 
goblet filled with 300 ducats. 

Caesar hated the whole house of Aragon, and the 
marriage of Alfonso with Lucrezia had lost all 
political importance, as it could no longer bring 
Caesar nearer to the throne of Naples. On the 15th 
of July 1500, Alfonso went, at eleven at night, to the 
Vatican to visit Lucrezia. As he ascended the St 
Peter's staircase, he was attacked by masked men. 



28 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

They left him for dead, but, seriously wounded as he 
was by the daggers of the assassins, the young Duke 
crawled to the Papal residence. He was admitted, 
and Lucrezia fainted when she saw his condition. 
His life was despaired of, and he received absolution. 
Youth, however, triumphed, and Biselli returned to 
life. He was tended, in the chambers of the Vatican,. 
by Lucrezia and Sancia, who themselves cooked all 
his food, while Alexander placed special guards 
round the Duke's chamber. The Venetian ambas- 
sador wrote to the Signoria to say that the attempt 
upon Alfonso's life was made by the person who had 
murdered Gandia. Caesar must have had a deadly 
personal hatred of Alfonso. He visited the w r ounded 
man, and said, with his meaning smile, as he left the 
room, that ' that which is not done by noon can be 
completed in the evening.' On the 18th of August, 
Caesar returned to the patient. It was nine at night* 
and he was accompanied by Capitano Michelotto. 
He drove Lucrezia and Sancia from the chamber of 
the young Duke, and then completed the murder. 
The body of Alfonso was carried into St Peter's. 

Caesar openly boasted of the murder. The Pope 
knew his son too well to trouble him with useless 
rebuke ; and oblivion, as in the case of Gandia, soon 
gathered round the bloody deed. No man held 
aloof from the Borgias ; no priest refused Caesar 
entrance to a church; no cardinal ceased to greet 
him with r reverence. Prelates hastened to him — for 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 29 

Caesar was, at the time, raising money by selling 
cardinal's hats to the highest bidders — to receive 
from his murderous hand the dignity which they had 
purchased. Surrounded by his condottieri, and, at 
the head of troops furnished by Alexander, Caesar 
went gaily forth on his campaign in the Romagna. 

Meanwhile we have no glimpse of Alfonso's 
widow. Such a murder must have had some shock 
for the nerves even of a Borgia ; and she is thought 
to have loved her husband. No hint exists that can 
give us any clue to the feelings of Lucrezia. Was 
she indignant, but compelled to silence by dread of 
Caesar? Did she acquiesce passively in the tragedy ? 
One would like some answer to the questions on 
this point which naturally suggest themselves ; but, 
alas! ; there lives no record of reply.' She knew 
well that her brother murdered Alfonso, but she 
certainly took no step to avenge her slaughtered 
husband, nor does any contemporary mention any 
grief or action on her part. One thing, however, is 
certain : she remained to the end of his life on 
intimate and even affectionate terms with Caesar ; 
their letters are familiar and friendly in tone ; and 
Lucrezia, when Duchess of Ferrara, strained her 
influence to the utmost to serve the interests of the 
Duke of Valentinois. She was then in no fear of her 
brother, and her action could only proceed fron. 
warm sympathy with him and with his fortunes. 

Hardly was the first Alfonso murdered, when there 



30 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

was already talk of a second Alfonso. In November 
1500, the Pope spoke of his project for a marriage 
between Lucrezia and the heir of Ferrara, Alfonso 
d'Este. Alfonso, twenty-four years of age, was a 
childless widower. The Venetian ambassador, on the 
26th of November, reported the scheme to his Govern- 
ment, and said that the idea proceeded wholly from 
the Pope. It seems probable that the new marriage 
had been contemplated in the Vatican before the 
then existing marriage had been bloodily severed. 
The Duke of Gravina, an Orsini, was a candidate 
for the honour of Lucrezia's hand ; but his claims 
were rejected in favour of Alfonso d'Este. 

The reigning Duke, Ercole d'Este, was, at first, 
as indignant at this proposal as Federigo of Naples 
had been at the projected alliance of Caesar with 
his house. The Duke's daughter, Isabella of Mantua, 
and Elisabetta of Urbino, were ' beside themselves r 
with rage and dismay. Alfonso himself refused to 
listen to the idea of such a marriage. 

The Pope put pressure on Ferrara through France, 
and threatened the Duke with the direst enmity of 
himself, of Caesar, and of Louis the Twelfth. Fear 
is an influential counsellor, and interest speaks with, 
a still, strong voice. Duke Ercole at last gave way, 
and sought only to obtain from the Pope exorbitant 
concessions in return for his consent. Alexander 
exclaimed angrily that Ercole was a mercatante, but 
he had ultimately to accede to the very high terms 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 3 1 

demanded by the Duke. The Emperor Maximilian 
opposed the marriage with all his influence. Indeed, 
such a marriage was, as Guicciardini says, ' molto 
indegno della famiglia d' Este, perche Lucrezia era 
spuria, e coperta di molte infamie.' Gregorovius 
says of Lucrezia, that at the time of the proposed 
Este marriage 'ihr Ruf war geradezu abschreckend/ 
It was felt on all hands that the honour of the proud 
house of Este was being basely trafficked away. 
Alfonso remained simply passive. He would take 
no step in the affair, and he never once wrote to 
Lucrezia during the negotiations for their marriage. 
Lucrezia's position must have been a degrading one 
for a proud woman. Her hand was being sold, by 
a forced sale, to a most unwilling purchaser. There 
could be no question of love, but there was every 
attribute of dishonour in the whole transaction. She, 
however, pressed on the marriage with feverish eager- 
ness. She was, the envoys said, ' a better Ferrarese 
than the Ferrarese themselves ; ' and she removed 
all difficulties between the Pope and the Duke. 

Her reputation was well known in Ferrara. When 
the Duke's envoys saw her in Rome, they reported 
that * her appearance in no way answered to her 
sinister reputation/ They praised her great beauty ;. 
they were delighted with her grace and winning 
charm of manner, with her sweet gaiety, and with 
her clear intellect. In short, the envoys, like all 
other men who came w T ithin the charmed circle, were 



32 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

enchanted by the magic of Lucrezia's personality. 
It was early, though, for the widow of the recently 
murdered young husband to be showing such cheer- 
fulness as the envoys complacently describe and 
dwell upon. 

It should be here mentioned- that the Pope, about 
this time, made the victorious Caesar Duke of the 
Romagna. Ferrara was politically important to the 
new Duke, and he was dangerous to the possessions 
of Este. In the course of the campaign, Caesar had 
seized Pesaro, and Giovanni Sforza was an exile in 
Ferrara itself. 

Lucrezia seems to have looked upon her marriage 
with Alfonso d'Este with naive vanity and ambition. 
It was the first time, in her experience of wedlock, 
that a throne had been offered to her, and that throne 
one of the oldest in Italy. 

At this juncture a curious little episode occurred 
in Rome. One of the most perplexing infants in 
history — an unusually wise child if he knew his own 
father — then probably about three years old, had to 
be provided for by the Holy Father. This child is 
Giovanni di Borgia. In a bull, dated September I, 
1501, Alexander declares that the boy was the ille- 
gitimate offspring of Caesar ; but that he, the Pope, 
in virtue of his apostolic power, is pleased to legiti- 
matise the child. In a second breve, dated directly 
after the former one, His Holiness explains that, 
although, ' for good reasons,' he had before ascribed 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 33 

the child to his son Caesar, he now acknowledges it 
as his own. He speaks of the infant as ' nobili 
infanti Johanni Borgia nostro secundem carnem 
nipote.' Lucrezia was generally believed to be the 
mother of this boy. When Giovanni came in after 
years to Ferrara, the Duchess called him her 
'- brother.' If she were his mother, the paternity of 
the lad becomes a delicate problem. 

At last, all difficulties were overcome, and on the 
6th of January 1502, Lucrezia left Rome — for ever. 
A splendid escort from Ferrara accompanied her to 
her new home and new life. Alfonso received his 
bride with cold, silent politeness ; but, during all the 
long festival which surrounded her marriage, Lucrezia 
is described as having been ' continuamente allegra 
e ridente.' Her beauty and her w r onderful witchery 
of manner elicited the ecstatic admiration of Ferrara ; 
and she became, at once, the idol of the Court and 
of the populace. 

A new life had indeed opened to her. She had 
left her father, and her Holy Father, her brothers, 
her mother Vanozza, Madonna Giulia, Donna Sancia. 
Her experiences of life in Rome had been terrible 
and dark. Surrounded by lawless passions, crimes, 
and tragedies, knowing well the sinister secrets of 
the Vatican of the Renaissance, placed from her 
earliest youth in a school of almost unexampled 
wickedness ; with the memories of two marriages, 
with one ex-husband living, and another festering in a 

C 



34 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

bloody shroud — Lucrezia Borgia had acquired a fear- 
ful reputation, and had lived a dreadful life. The 
near personal support of Alexander and of Caesar 
had ceased. They could no longer control or compel. 
Ferrara, compared to Rome, was noble and was pure. 
We shall never know whether, during her Roman 
life, she had been compelled into complicity with 
crime ; or whether she, too, had been a genuine 
Borgia, and had shared contentedly the Borgia life 
of sin and shame. Was her eagerness for the Ferrara 
marriage a desire for a better life ? or was it merely 
the result of an ambition which aspired to a throne ? 
Again we know not, and can never know. Of regret, 
of remorse for the dark past, there is no sign or 
hint. She shared the magnificent physique of her 
race ; had their temperamental cheerfulness, their 
equable temper, their powers of enjoyment, their 
strength of nerve, their want of conscience, their 
vanity, and their ambition. In her, also, the moral 
sense was non-existent, and superstition ruled where 
religion should have reigned. The final estimate of 
her character, the examination into evidence for or 
against her, must be reserved till later ; but, taking 
the most favourable view of Lucrezia w T hen she ex- 
changed Rome for Ferrara, we must, at least, regard 
her as a woman of her race and of her time. She 
was a type of the Renaissance, and the daughter of 
the Borgia. This brief narrative of her life and ways 
here frees itself, gladly, from the gloom of Rome, 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 35 

and breathes a purer air in Ferrara. Henceforth 
Lucrezia Borgia, with the worst passages of her evil 
life left behind her, will move before us as the heroine 
of poet and of dramatist, as the delight of a Court, 
as the patroness of art, as the beloved of a people 
— as the renowned Duchess of Ferrara. 



I I. — F E R R A R A. 

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, 
The months will add themselves and make the years, 
The years will roll into the centuries, 
And mine will ever be a name of scorn. — Guinevere. 

HERR Gregorovius evinces a sympathetic ac- 
quaintance with the picturesque side of the Italian 
Renaissance, with its splendour and its art, with its 
masques and dancings, with its costume, ceremonials, 
and cavalcades. His description of the fetes which 
delighted Ferrara at the nuptials of Lucrezia and 
Alfonso is minute, full, and graphic. Isabella 
Gonzaga did the honours, as lady representative of 
the house of Este. with scarcely dissembled unwill- 
ingness, and with a heart full of rage against her in- 
famous new sister-in-law. The only voice which ever 
disputed Lucrezia's claim to beauty is that of Isa- 
bella, herself one of the fairest women of the day, 
who did not find the renowned bride so very beautiful 



3 



6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 



— considered, in fact, that Lucrezia's reputation for 
charms was somewhat exaggerated. The general 
welcome accorded to the Pope's daughter was,, 
however, undoubtedly warm and hearty. Lucrezia's 
natural grace and charm were heightened by the 
radiant triumph which expressed itself in her whole 
bearing. The Pope was gratified by her reception 
in Ferrara. Madonna Adriana, at his wish, accom- 
panied Lucrezia to her new home. Either by 
design, or under the pressure of necessity, the house 
of Este had prepared a selection of bastard daughters 
to receive Lucrezia in her palace. Arrived at the 
great staircase, she was greeted by another Lucrezia,. 
a natural daughter of Duke Ercole, married to 
Annibale Bentivoglio ; by three illegitimate children 
of Sigismund of Este — Lucrezia, Countess of Cararra,. 
the fair Diana, Countess Uguzoni, and Bianca 
Sanseverino. All agreed that the young duke's 
young wife was venusta, gentile, graziosa, amabile r 
Whatever prejudice may have existed against her,, 
this remarkable woman succeeded without effort in 
enchanting all — with the exception of the noble 
Isabella Gonzaga — with whom she came in contact. 
Her happiness lent her an added force to the magic 
of great charm. 

Alexander the Sixth was ' shut up in measureless 
content'' at the success of the marriage which he 
had, with so much difficulty, brought about t He 
did not expect that Alfonso should love Lucrezia ; 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. $J 

but he desired that she should be treated with the 
honour due to a wife, and that she should be made 
the mother of a prince. He told the Ferrarese 
ambassador in Rome that, so long as Alfonso visited 
Lucrezia at night, he might run all day after other 
amours ; and indeed, said the good old man, con- 
sidering that my son-in-law is still so young, he does 
quite right to amuse himself in that way. Alfonso 
had no reason to dread any oppressively strict mor- 
ality on the part of his respected father-in-law. 

Caesar, who had just strangled the young Astorre 
Manfredi in Sant Angelo, continued his campaign 
of successful rapine. He wrote the news of his 
triumphs to Lucrezia, and when, on the 5th of 
September, she was confined of a still-born child, 
he came to Ferrara to visit his sister. There is 
every evidence of intimate and cordial relations 
between the Duke of Valentinois and the Duchess of 
Ferrara. The Gonzagas lis:ened to a proposal of 
marriage between their heir, Federigo, and Caesar's 
daughter Luise. Caesar, at this time, had all but 
attained the great object of his ambition — the 
crown of Middle Italy ; when Louis the Twelfth 
interfered and forbade his further progress in that 
direction. 

On the 1 8th of August 1503, Alexander the 
Sixth died of poison, and his son Caesar was all but 
included in the same fate. We will let Guiccardini 
tell the tale in his own quaint way. He says : — 



38 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

E cosa manifesta, essere stata consuetudine frequente del 
padre e sua [this refers to Caesar] non solo di usuare il veleno, 
per vendicarsi contro agP inimici, o per assicurarsi dei sospetti r 
ma eziandio per scellerata cupidita di spogliare delle proprie T 
faculta le persone ricche, cardinali e altri cortigiani, non 
avendo rispetto che da essi non avessero mai ricevuta ofTesa 
alcuna, come fu il cardinale molto ricco di S. Angelo, ma ne 
anche che erli fossero amicissimi e consriuntissimi. 



In explanation of this allusion to Cardinal S. Angelo r 
it should be mentioned that the chamberlain of the 
murdered cardinal — the said chamberlain being- 
executed for other and manifold misdeeds — con- 
fessed, before his death, that he had poisoned the 
cardinal under the express orders of Alexander anc 
of Caesar. Guicciardini's distinct statement of the 
Borgia practice of poisoning enemies or victims is 
borne out by the fact that Alexander and Caesar 
were both poisoned by some (for them) mischance 
in an attempt to poison Adriano, Cardinale di 
Corneto. By an accident, the poisoned chalice, in- 
tended for another, was commended to their own lips. 
Caesar, who was much younger than his father, saved 
his life by the timely use of antidotes, things with 
which he was probably well acquainted ; but Alexan- 
der perished miserably by the very poison which he 
had intended for the cardinal. 

He died unregretted. Indeed, humanity seemed to 
breathe more freely when this monster was removed 
from the earth. Owing to the horrible effects of the 
Borgia poison, the corpse of the Pope had lost all 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 39 

shape and form, all distinction between length and 
breadth. A rope was fastened round the feet, and 
one porter dragged the body to its place of sepulture. 
Alexander's death-bed was not soothed by love. 
Neither Vanozza nor Giulia Farnese seems to have 
been near him. Lucrezia was in Ferrara, and Caesar 
was suffering from the effects of the same deadly 
poison. Guicciardini says of Alexander the Sixth : — 

La sua immoderata ambizione, e pestifera perfidia, e con tutti 
gli essempj di orribile crudelta, di mostruosa libidine e d'inau- 
dita avarizia, vendendo senza distinzione le cose sacre e le pro- 
fane, aveva attossicato tutto il mondo. E non dimeno era stato 
esaltato con rarissima e quasi perpetua prosperity dalla prima 
gioventu insino all' ultimo della vita sua, desiderando sempre 
cose grandissime, e ottenendo piu di quello desiderava. 

The life, the actions, and the character of this Pope 
will for ever remain a moral problem. It must be 
remembered that he was Pope. He was not merely 
an almost incredibly wicked man, but he claimed to 
be the vicar of God. Apart even from the darkest 
crime which stains his infamous memory, his life was 
a long breach of the commandments which say, thou 
shalt not steal ; thou shalt do no murder ; thou shalt 
not commit adultery ; thou shalt not bear false witness 
against thy neighbour. Alexander the Sixth is, per- 
haps, the greatest and the foulest criminal in history ; 
and he is, furthermore, an occupant of the chair of 
St Peter, the infallible pontiff of a Church which 
claims to represent Christianity. His life, and his 
success in life, destroy completely ail the mystical 



40 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

pretensions which the superstitions and the fancies of 
men have woven round the Papacy. The spectacle of 
Rodrigo Borgia as Vicegerent of Christ excites almost 
a demoniac tendency to unnatural, mirthless amuse- 
ment. The contrast of man and office awakens a sort 
of hideous humour. 

Alexander did not hate or contemn the world ; he 
was no Titanic sceptic or atheist, whose profound dis- 
belief in divinity, and raging scorn of humanity, led 
him to despise heaven and to defy hell. No, he be- 
lieved — in his way ; but he could turn from incest, 
from adultery, from murder, to worship the Virgin, to 
perform mass, to fulfil any of the highest and most 
mystical functions of sacerdotal sacredness. He was 
nearly always successful ; he was habitually happy. 
His health was fine, and his physique superb. He 
was superbly ambitious for himself; and his love for 
his children made him ambitious for them. His 
sensuality was measureless, and his greed unbounded ; 
but he shared his spoils with his offspring, and helped 
them to acquire for themselves. He bad absolutely 
no conscience, no moral sense ; and no dread what- 
ever of the reward of crime. He too might say, with 
Cenci, — 

And I have no remorse, and little fear, 
Which are, I think, the checks of other men. 

In him were blended materialism and superstition. 
He touches humanity chiefly in his love for his chil- 
dren, but is otherwise as infra-human as he is undivine. 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 4 1 

It would almost seem as if some demon had, in 
mockery of men, created a being who should thrive 
•through unsurpassed wickedness, and who — as the 
profoundest effort of most devilish satire — should be 
placed on high in the then chief office of Christendom, 
and be worshipped by millions as the infallible re- 
presentative on earth of the all-wise, all-merciful, 
omniscient, and eternal God. He is reported to have 
said, w 7 hen dying, * I come ; so is right : wait but a 
very little ; ' and human credulity delighted in a be- 
lief that he had made a compact with the Evil One 
to sell his soul for the Papacy and the satisfaction 
of his lawless desires. He was, said the report, to 
enjoy the holy seat for twelve years ; and, in fact, 
he was Pope for that period. Seven devils were, it 
was stated, seen of men in his death-chamber ; and 
the Faust character of the popular belief was height- 
ened by the story of a black hound running restlessly 
about in St Peter's. 

It is probable that Lucrezia did not see the letters 
of her father-in-law about the late Pope, her father. 
Ercole spoke his views plainly. Bembo describes 
Lucrezia as being in deep dejection when the news 
•came ; but sorrow may have been blended with ap- 
prehension about the influence of the Pope's death 
upon her own position. Alfonso was, however, loyal 
to his wife. If he did not love her, he found in her, as- 
suredly, an astute ally and a valuable helpmate. When 
the race of Borgia was proscribed, and Caesar himself 



42 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

was in ignoble flight, Lucrezia remained safely shel- 
tered and duly honoured in Ferrara. She was not 
included in the fall of her race and name. The 
children, Rodrigo and Giovanni Borgia, were in 
Rome ; and the Orsini raged for the blood of every 
Borgia. Lucrezia exerted her influence to the very 
utmost to save and serve Caesar Borgia, whose con- 
quests, including those in the Romagna, were fast 
melting away. She probably could not, certainly did 
not, have the children in Ferrara, but she exerted her- 
self for their safety and welfare, and a list is still 
extant, in the archives, of the clothing with which 
she, at that time, supplied them. 

On the 22d of September 1503, Cardinal Piccolo- 
mini succeeded to the Papal chair as Pius the Third. 
The good old man had twelve bastard children, and 
his tender efforts to provide suitably for them in the 
Vatican were frustrated by his untimely death, which 
occurred on the 18th of October. 

Cardinal Rovere was next elected, on the 1st of 
November 1503, as Pope Julius the Second. He 
continued the political worldly policy of Alexander 
the Sixth. Although his interests led him to oppose 
the House of Borgia, he yet warmly admired their 
talents and successes. 

In 1505, Alfonso, then on a visit to our Henry 
the Seventh of England, was hastily summoned back 
to Ferrara, and arrived in time to close the eyes 
of his father, Duke Ercole. He then became the 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 43 

reigning Duke, and Lucrezia the actual Duchess of 
Ferrara. 

In 1506, Donna Sancia died childless; and on the 
28th of August 15 12, Lucrezia's son, Rodrigo, died, 
at the age of thirteen, in Bari. She never saw the 
boy after she left Rome. 

After many misfortunes and vicissitudes, Caesar, 
the most terrible of the Borgias, died on the 12th of 
March 1507; and the accomplished villain had the 
undeserved good fortune to die a soldier's death. 
As a mercenary, in the pay of Navarre, he was 
engaged in besieging the Conte di Lerin, in the 
castle of Viana, when he received his death-wound. 
Lucrezia's grief at the death of the murderer of her 
brother Gandia, and of her second husband, Alfonso 
of Biselli, seems to have been great and deep. She 
cared for his two bastards, Girolamo and Lucrezia, 
in Ferrara itself. In 15 10. her first husband, 
Giovanni Sforza, died ; he was remarried, and left a 
legitimate son. Caesar's daughter, Luise, married 
first Louis de la Tremouille, and afterwards Philippe 
de Bourbon. Her mother, the widow of the Duke of 
Valentinois, retired from the world, and lived, until her 
death, in strict seclusion. Ercole Strozzi sang the 
glorious life and heroic deeds of Caesar Borgia in 
pompous strains which he dedicated to Lucrezia. 
He depicts Lucrezia and Charlotte mourning the 
death of the brother and husband, as Cassandra and 
Polyxena wept for Achilles. He recites all Caesar's 



44 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

violent victories and usurpations ; but, while he 
exalts his hero as superior to all the heroes of 
antiquity, he omits any mention of his black crimes, 
all allusion to those many murders, a list of which 
would perhaps have swelled the poem beyond all 
reasonable length. The treachery of Sinigaglia 
alone would have occupied too much space. 

Alfonso d'Este was a quiet, practical man ; some- 
thing hard, and cold, and stern, but true and loyal, 
and devoted to Ferrara's welfare. He was no 
* expensive Herr,' but a prince w T ho cared little for 
court splendour or personal expenditure, and occu- 
pied himself chiefly with politics, with fortifications, 
and with the casting of cannon. I observe some- 
thing of the Hohenzollern nature in this quiet, 
strenuous, active Alfonso. The situation of Ferrara 
was an anxious and a dangerous one. It was 
threatened by powerful enemies — by the Pope and 
by Venice ; and, but for Alfonso's vigilance and 
energy, his duchy would surely have been taken from 
him. He left to his lovely wife court ceremonials 
and festivals ; he left it to her to patronise painting 
and poetry ; while he perfected that artillery which, 
remarkable for its time, afterwards won, in 15 12, that 
battle of Ravenna, in which the loss, of Gaston de 
Foix changed French victory into mourning. ' Le 
bon chevalier, le seigneur de Bayard/ visited Ferrara 
after the great battle, and saw Lucrezia. Fresh from 
France, he knew, probably, but little of her dark 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 45 

past, and, like a chivalrous poet-hearted knight, 
Bayard was enchanted with Ferrara's lovely and 
winning Duchess. He wrote, — 'J'ose bien dire que, 
de son temps, ni beaucoup avant, il ne s'est point 
trouve de plus triomphante princesse, car elle etait 
belle, bonne, douce et courtoise a toutes gens/ 
Lucrezia's manner must have been sweet and fine ; 
the grace of the princess tempered by the charm of 
the charming woman. She, too, was one of those 
princesses who madden poets : she had her Rizzio 
and Chatelard — her Bembo and Strozzi. Both poets 
were deeply, passionately enamoured of her, and she, 
in some sort, returned their affection ; though the 
question of the exact extent of her relations towards 
them is a point which must be relegated to the 
hypotheses of history. 

Many of the letters which were interchanged 
between Lucrezia and Bembo are still extant, and 
writ in very choice Italian. Those of Lucrezia 
appear to express a warmer feeling than friendship ; 
and the lock of her golden hair, still to be seen in the 
Ambrosiana of Milan, was given by the Duchess to 
her adorer, Bembo. Alfonso was not, however, a 
husband whose jealousy could safely be aroused. 
Bembo, no doubt under pressure from the Duke, 
suddenly quitted Ferrara ; and Ercole Strozzi, who 
remained, met a tragic fate. On the morning of the 
6th of June 1508, the young poet was found dead 
at the corner of the Palazzo d'Este, pierced with 



4'5 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

three-and-tvventy wounds. Strozzi was the pride of 
Ferrara, and the popular excitement was great. No 
inquiry was instituted, ' and no man,' says Paul 
Jovius, * dared to name the murderer.' Two theories 
were current : one was that the jealous Alfonso had 
caused the deed to be done ; the other that the 
Duchess had instigated the destruction of a lover 
who had just transferred his affections to Barbara 
Torelli. The truth was known to but very few, and 
they were silent; but the ardent young poet, who 
had scorched his wings at his high and dangerous 
love, perished miserably by the assassin's dagger, and 
exchanged life, and love, and song for an early and 
a bloody grave.* 

In November 1506, w T e again hear of La Bella, of 
that Giulia who had founded the fortunes of the 
house of Farnese by her adultery with the late Pope. 
When all the Borgia faction fled for life from Rome, 
she went with Madonna Adriana to Bassanello, and 
there remained in safety. Her husband was dead. 
Giulia and Lucrezia continued in constant and 
intimate correspondence. To the astonishment of 
Rome, this adventurous adulteress succeeded in 
marrying her daughter Laura, the bastard child of 

* As a specimen of Ercole Strozzi's poetical homage to Lucrezia, 
the following verse may be cited : — 

' Laeto nata solo, dextra., rosa, pollice carpta ; 
Unde tibi solito pulchrior, unde color ? 
Num te iterum tinxit Venus ? an potius tibi tantum 
Borgia purpureo praebuit ore decus ? ' 



LUCREZ1A BORGIA. 47 

Alexander the Sixth, to Niccolo Rovere, the * carnal 
nipote' of the Pope Julius the Second. This was 
great advancement for the sister of even the Duchess 
of Ferrara. The marriage took place in the Vatican. 
It meant reconciliation between the houses of Rovere 
and of Borgia ; but it excited general surprise, and 
produced many epigrams. It was, perhaps, the 
greatest triumph achieved in the romantic life of 
Giulia Farnese, and restored her to the highest ranks 
of Roman aristocracy. She knew T well the advan- 
tages of Papal favour. In May 1506, Julius the 
Second had given his own illegitimate daughter 
Felice in marriage to Giangior Lano Orsini of 
Bracciano, and the house of Orsini was gained over 
to the house of Rovere. Giulia, still a beautiful and 
seductive woman, returned to a life of splendour and 
of luxury. 

In 15 13, the truculent Julius the Second died, 
and was succeeded by the 'false Medici/ Leo X. 
Pietro Bembo, the poet lover of Lucrezia, became 
secretary to the new Pope. 

On the 26th of November 15 18, Vanozza Catanei, 
the mother of Lucrezia, died in Rome. The old 
sinner had become, in her later days, rigidly devout. 
Gregorovius says of her, ' sie wurde eine werkheilige 
Bettschwester.' The archives of Ferrara contain nine 
of her letters, addressed to Lucrezia and to Cardinal 
Ippolito. She w r as also in correspondence with her 
son, the Prince of Squillace, and, in the year 1515, 



48 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

she received into her house her grandson, of ten 
years old, the son of Giuffre, or Goffredo. Her letters, 
show a woman of strong sense, of force of character,, 
very cunning, with a keen eye to her own interests,, 
and of rough culture. She must have had something 
of the distinctive power of will which she transmitted 
to her children. It is noteworthy that Rodrigo 
Borgia's bastards, other than his Catanei children,, 
all sank into the dark background of their time, 
and were absorbed by the ordinary life of the day ; 
whereas Caesar, Gandia, Lucrezia, are figures with 
force enough to stand out against the age, and have 
made their mark in history, in story, and in song. 
Vanozza signs herself, when writing to Lucrezia, ' la 
felice et infelice quanto matre, Vanotia Borgia de 
Cathaneis.' Her letters are not written with her 
own hand, but have been dictated to some amanu- 
ensis. During the evil days for the house of Borgia, 
she fled at first to her son Caesar, but she returned 
to Rome so soon as it was safe to do so ; and she 
managed to retain her not inconsiderable property.. 
She left all that she died possessed of to the Church, 
and was buried in the church of S. Maria del Popolo. 
Her funeral was attended with almost the same pomp 
as that of a cardinal, and Leo the Tenth sent his 
chamberlain to do honour to her obsequies. A 
splendid tomb, bearing a lying inscription, was 
erected over her remains ; but hate or shame, in 
after years, destroyed her monument,- and left not 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 49 

a trace of inscription or of sarcophagus. The masses 
for which she had paid in advance, to purchase 
heaven, were read for two hundred years, but were 
at last stopped by the Church ; less, perhaps, from 
the belief that enough had been done for the repose 
of the soul of Vanozza, than from a dread of modern 
criticism. She was a woman whose life contained 
many memories, and who knew much of the interior 
of the Vatican. She was also Lucrezia's earliest link 
to life. 

Under Leo the Tenth, Don Michelotto, Caesar's old 
captain, was examined, under torture, in S. Angelo, 
touching his complicity with Caesar in the murders of 
Gandia, of Alfonso of Aragon, of Varano, of Camerine, 
of Astorre and Ottasiano Manfredi, of Bernardino of 
Sermoneta, of the Bishop of Cagli, and of many another 
victim. He confessed under the second application 
of the rack, and ' dixe che Papa Alessandro fu quello 
che fece ammazzare Don Alfonso, marito che fu della 
Duchessa.' This confession was reported forthwith to 
Ferrara. 

Ariosto is the poet who forms the chief glory of 
Ferrara ; and he has immortalised the house of 
Este in the Orlando Furioso. In his temple of dis- 
tinguished women he has placed Lucrezia. Ariosto 
was in the service of the profligate and cruel Cardinal 
Ippolito. Titian and Raphael both painted for 
Alfonso, and Lucrezia had in her cabinet a marble 
Cupid by Michael Angelo ; of which statue the 

D 



5 O STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

gallant Ercole Strozzi sang that the god had been 
turned to stone by the glances of Lucrezia's eyes. 
Many portraits of Lucrezia were painted in her 
lifetime, but not one is now known to exist. Some 
of them are, no doubt, pointed out in Italian galleries 
by confident cognoscenti as the portraits of other 
women. The portrait which Titian, it is believed, 
painted of her is unrecognised. Like the lost portrait 
of Sir Philip Sidney by Tinteretto, it is now, doubt- 
less, ascribed to some other original. A head upon 
a medal, a sumptuous reputation, and verbal descrip- 
tions by poets or ambassadors, are now the only 
evidences which we possess of the matchless beauty 
of the splendidly lovely Lucrezia Borgia. 

During the troublous times of Ferrara, her husband, 
when away with the army, left Lucrezia regent ; and 
her rule was wise and prudent. She was, indeed, as 
her father had justly said of her, a woman of rare 
mental power and talent. Her conduct, during her 
later life in Ferrara, was blameless and even ex- 
emplary. As the lust of the eye and the pride of 
life departed slowly with youth, with beauty, and 
with vanity, Lucrezia, like her mother, turned more 
and more to religious observances. She seemed to 
forget her past, and her past seemed to be forgotten 
of men. Bigotry waxed as vice waned. She bore 
five children, presumably, to Alfonso ; and her son 
succeeded to the dukedom as Ercole the Second 
of Este. He married that Renee, the daughter of 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 5 I 

Louis the Twelfth, who afterwards embraced the 
Reformation. 

On the 14th of June 1519, Lucrezia was confined 
of a still-born daughter. It soon became evident that 
the illness consequent upon this confinement would 
prove fatal, and the Duchess prepared to pay the debt 
of nature. As a woman she had good grounds for 
a just estimate of Popes, but as a Catholic she desired 
the Papal benediction ; and she wrote, describing 
herself as a sinner, to Leo .the Tenth, for his blessing 
before death. On the night of the 24th of June, she 
died. Her husband was present, and showed grief 
for the loss of his valuable ally and life companion 
of so many years. Alfonso survived Lucrezia fifteen 
years. He died on the 31st of October 1534. Our 
George the Second assured his dying queen, Caroline 
of Anspach, that he should never marry again, but 
would manage to make out with mistresses. Alfonso 
acted on the same principle. He never again married ; 
but a certain beautiful Laura Eustochia Dianti, of 
Ferrara, became his acknowledged mistress, and bore 
him two sons, Alfonso and Alfonsino. 

The evil fame which Lucrezia's later life had 
partly silenced, broke out again after her death. 
When Guidobaldo the Second was about to choose 
a wife, his father warned him against the frequent 
misalliances of princes, and cited that of Alfonso of 
Ferrara, who married Lucrezia Borgia, a woman ' of 
a sort that every man knows/ The son agreed in 



52 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

this judgment; and said that he had, he knew, a 
father who would never compel him to marry a 
woman like Lucrezia, ' di- quella mala sorte che fix 
quella, e con tante disoneste parti.' 

We have now run through a necessarily very con- 
densed narrative of the Borgia triumvirate, and I 
must devote a few final words to the examination of 
the arguments of those who, like Herr Gregorovius,. 
contend that Lucrezia Borgia is a much maligned 
woman ; and that the general historical conception,, 
both of contemporaries and of later writers, is 
essentially ungenerous and unjust. There is a full 
consentience of contemporary historical witnesses 
relative to even the darkest guilt which loads with 
infamy the memory of Lucrezia Borgia. The 
attackers are Guicciardini, Machiavelli (who is 
explicit touching the relations between his hero 
Caesar and Lucrezia), Sannazaro, Pontano, Mata- 
razzo, Priuli, Petrus Martyr, Marcus Attilius Alexius ; 
while from among the ranks of the olden assailants 
rises the towering crest of the great modern, Gibbon. 

The defenders are Herr Gregorovius, Mr W. Gilbert, 
Roscoe, and the Marchese Campori, who is the author 
of Una Vittima della Stoi r ia. There are some minor 
admirers or whitewashes, as Monsignor Antonelli y 
Giovanni Zucchetti, Domenico Cerri, Bernardo Gatti ; 
but this latter list comprises no writer of special mark 
or importance. 

In order to narrow the field of inquiry, it may at 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 53 

once be remarked that the assailants all refer their 
grave charges to the Roman period of Lucrezia's 
life. The defenders are fond of dwelling upon the 
Ferrara time, and argue that a woman who could 
live so well in Ferrara could not have been guilty of 
such evil as is charged against her in Rome. 
The leading tenets of the defenders are : — 
i. That such heinous crime as is charged against 
Lucrezia Borgia is, in itself, a thing incredible. 

2. That a woman so lovely and so charming as she 
admittedly was, could not have been guilty. 

3. That the life in Ferrara contradicts the life 
which she is said to have led in Rome. 

It is worth while to examine this defence in detail. 

Contemporary poets were, in the Ferrara time, 
her panegyrists and flatterers ; but no contemporary 
historian omits to mention, with all the calmness 
of conviction, the leading criminal charges against 
Lucrezia. 

The defenders cannot proceed by way of rebutting 
or shaking evidence. They can only refuse to give 
credence to it, and allege sentimentally that it should 
not be believed. As the true colours on a frescoed 
wall may be obscured and hidden by a layer of white- 
wash, they seek to cover over evidence which they 
cannot refute. 

Gregorovius maintains that the moral sense is 
outraged by believing the historical evidence against 
Lucrezia ; but surely the moral sense exceeds its 



54 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

province when it assuages its disgust by ignoring 
evidence, or by tampering with facts. It is right that 
certain facts should revolt the moral sense ; but it 
is not moral to find an escape for the mind by 
denying or disguising facts. The question is one of 
fact ; not whether the facts are pretty. The history 
of the Renaissance in Italy is in itself a large fact 
which contains a great deal that must revolt the 
moral sense. 

The merely sentimental desire to exculpate 
Lucrezia, in the teeth of evidence, arises rather 
from the feeling of a weakling than from the 
judgment of a critic. The beauty of Lucrezia 
lives after her, and men who have never seen her 
are influenced by it, as those who did see her were 
subjugated by the witchery of her exceeding love- 
liness, and by the magic of her manner. Mary 
Queen of Scots, in like manner, though long dead, 
yet speaketh. Women of transcendent charm work 
upon posterity, and find champions after death as 
they found lovers or victims during life. The en- 
chantment of femininity is a thing apart from worth 
or goodness. The great witch-women of history stir 
up adherents who passionately refuse to believe evil 
where they are moved by beauty. The beauty of 
woman, whether divine or demoniac, is indeed one 
of the great powers of the world, and few things 
in history have had more influence upon the course 
of human affairs. Its power outlasts its possessor. 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 55 

Beauty, like other fine entities, depraves some men as 
it ennobles others. 

It may confidently be contended that there is no 
crime which the heart of man can conceive, of which 
a Borgia was not capable. There are no limits, 
absolutely none, to their capacity for crime. With- 
out conscience or fear, ruth or remorse, they used 
unhesitatingly the dagger or the poison-cup, and 
certainly hesitated neither at adultery nor at incest. 
The very oscillations of opinion, in modern times, 
about Lucrezia's dark guilt, arise chiefly from the 
difficulty of realising the Renaissance, or compre- 
hending the Borgia nature. We find it hard to 
believe that such beings were ; and yet they were, 
and were the ripened fruit of their land, their time 
their Church. Contemporary historians found no 
insuperable difficulty in crediting the current know- 
ledge of all men. They simply recorded facts — 
facts not to them very startling or very shocking — 
which were known at every court in Italy, and 
talked of, though with bated breath most softly 
drawn in fear, by every noble, by every churchman, 
by every citizen. It is a common thing to find 
persons who judge the deeds of a past age by the 
ideas and customs of their own. The transfusion 
of the mind into bygone manners requires a peculiar 
gift or training. The chief and most revolting crime 
of the Borgias was not unknown, was not even quite 
singular, in the Italy of their day. It is not 



56 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

necessary to grope long amongst Italian literature 
of the day for instances in the plural of incest ; it 
will be sufficient to cite one example. Machiavelli 
(Discorsi i. 27), when he blame, Gianpolo Baglioni, 
of Perugia, for not having acquired eternal glory by 
murdering the Pope, Julius the Second, who had 
rashly ventured, with but a small escort, into the 
city which Gianpolo held with a large force, says 
that such cowardice is the more surprising because 
Gianpolo was a fine villain, who had murdered all 
the relations who stood in his way, and who was 
then living with his sister as his mistress — * usava 
con la sorella.' The case of the Cenci is awfully 
notorious. 

The incidents which occur in boudoir or in bed- 
chamber are less visible than actions performed upon 
a Papal throne, or in a camp in the Romagna. 
History, when it enters a lady's bower, must tread 
softly and speak low, glad if it can pick up a hint from 
a soubrette, or catch a whisper from a chamberlain. 
Such persons mainly preserve a silence dictated by 
fear, or inspired by interest ; and yet a great, foul 
secret is never wholly kept. Tongues are loose, and 
the walls of palaces have ears. Lucrezia's dark 
secret would be hard to penetrate, were not her 
accomplices in it Rodrigo, Caesar, and Gandia. 

Facts and arguments form a ladder by which the 
seer attains to heights from which he gazes with 
passionate vision or clearer insight. We have to ask 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 57 

ourselves — what would Shakspeare have said of 
Lucrezia? If his English imagination had become 
familiar with the records of the Renaissance, how 
would he, he who drew Lady Macbeth, Queen Ger- 
trude, Goneril, and Regan, have painted Lucrezia ? 
It were bold to assume to answer for him, and yet 
I think, there can be little doubt. The creator of 
Cleopatra would have evolved a character of a fair 
fiend, demoniac in charm, detestable in wickedness. 
He would have fused into a living whole the picture 
•of a being based upon the pregnant hints of black- 
letter history. Failing the help of Shakspeare, can 
we accept Gregorovius as our guide ? 

All the interesting documents discovered by the 
German Historian contain no refutation or rebut- 
ment of the contemporary historians. That broad 
current of human knowledge and belief upon which 
the record of the chronicler is partly based, remains 
•entirely unchecked by Gregorovius' researches. For 
•evidence we must go back to the original sources, 
and out of the old materials we have to construct 
•our conception of a character at once so fair and 
so dark. 

Roscoe says, writing in that weak and balanced 
style which is a result of the tendency of historians 
of his day to imitate Hume, — ' We may be allowed 
to conclude that it is scarcely possible, consistently 
with the known laws of moral character, that the 
flagitious and abominable Lucrezia Borgia, and the 



58 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

respectable and honoured Duchess of Ferrara, could 
be united in the same person/ He shows here, as I 
contend, a want of constructive imagination, or im- 
aginative insight. The commonly known ' laws of 
moral character ' do not apply to the Borgias, who 
were the moral phenomena that they were in conse- 
quence of standing outside known laws, and being 
capable of any atrocity while maintaining serenity 
and retaining mental ability. Lucrezia's policy in 
Ferrara was clear, and her adherence to what was 
politic is a note or sign of her undoubted capacity. 
Her position in Ferrara, especially after the death 
of her father, was one of entire dependence upon the 
goodwill and benevolence of the house of Este, and 
of her husband. Alfonso, who had never loved his 
wife, and who had, most unwillingly, been constrained 
to wed her, was yet loyal and true to his useful part- 
ner ; but Alfonso was a stern lord, and one who 
would, beyond a doubt, have made short work with 
a wanton wife. When Lucrezia first arrived in Fer- 
rara, she was taken by Alfonso — and he probably 
had a meaning in what he did — to the Aurora, at 
the foot of the Lion's Tower, where, by order of 
Niccolo the Third, his son Ugo and his wife Parisina 
Malatesta were beheaded, in the presence of the 
father and husband, for incestuous adultery. Lu- 
crezia, without support from father or brother, free 
from their influence, and in a regal position open to 
the ' fierce light that beats upon a throne/ may have 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 59 

desired to atone for her past by a better life. It is 
by no means, as I hold, difficult to reconcile the 
criminal Lucrezia of grand and gloomy Rome with 
the popular Duchess of the gayer and lighter Fer- 
rara. Lucrezia was too wary and too wise to risk, 
in Ferrara, the loss of. throne, of husband, and of 
life. Gibbon says, in his Antiquities of the House of 
Brunswick, — ' The house of Este was sullied by a 
sanguinary and incestuous race — by the nuptials ol 
Alfonso the First with Lucretia, a bastard of Alexan- 
der the Sixth, the Tiberius of Christian Rome. This 
modern Lucretia might have assumed with more 
propriety the name of Messalina; since the woman 
who can be guilty, who can even be accused, of a 
criminal intercourse with a father and two brothers, 
must be abandoned to all the licentiousness of venal 
love.' I think that Gibbon may well be left to 
answer Roscoe. 

Of Guicciardini himself Sir W. Jones says, — c We 
have finished the twentieth and last book of Guic- 
ciardini's history; the most authentic, I believe (may 
I add, I fear ?) that ever was composed. I believe 
it, because the historian was an actor in his terrible 
drama, and personally knew the principal performers 
in it ; and I fear it, because it exhibits the woeful 
picture of society in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies.' In fact, the testimony of the old chronicler 
has never been historically impugned. Beauty 
dazzles judgment, and sentimentalists may decide 



60 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

not to receive evidence which tells against their sen- 
timent ; but they cannot shake the evidence of Guic- 
cardini. If we believe that Louis the Fourteenth had 
illicit relations with Madame de Maintenon, or that 
Charles the Second had love passages with Mistress 
Eleanor Gwynne, we may also believe the record of 
the Borgias. Herr Gregorovius asks, in one place, 
if it be possible to believe that Ariosto and the 
other poets of Ferrara would have sung Lucrezia's 
praises as they did sing them, if she had been guilty 
of the crimes imputed to her. I answer — most pos- 
sible. The man who believes that their flatteries 
disprove historical evidence, shows a want of insight, 
and fails to comprehend the real tone of the Renais- 
sance, In that time the nerves, as the morals of men, 
differed widely from the nerves or morals of men of 
a later day. There was then a subtle sympathy 
between the committers of great atrocities and con- 
temporary society. In the Italian Renaissance per- 
sons so highly placed as were the Borgias could do 
pretty much what they would without exciting 
general moral reprehension ; and a fair Duchess of 
Ferrara would meet with nothing but praise in her 
own capital. Besides, I can, I think, effectually dis- 
pose of the moral value of Ariosto's praise by a short 
but pregnant narrative. Ariosto was a poet, but was 
emphatically a Court poet, and that in an Italian 
Court of the Renaissance. The narrative is this : 
Lucrezia brought with her to Ferrara, Angela Borgia, 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 6 1 

then a lovely young girl. Cardinal Ippolito and his 
natural brother, Giulio d'Este, both fell in love with 
Angela. She preferred Giulio, and praised his ' beau- 
tiful eyes/ The jealous cardinal determined upon 
revenge, and hired assassins to waylay Giulio on his 
return from hunting, and to put out those eyes 
which had won the praise of Angela. This was 
done ; but the surgeons of Ferrara succeeded 
ultimately in saving the sight of one of Giulio's 
eyes. The cruel deed was committed on the 3d of 
November 1505. The cardinal was punished by 
slight and short exile from Ferrara ; but Giulio was 
dissatisfied w T ith Alfonso's light dealing with so base 
an attempt, and the natural brother devised his very 
Italian scheme of vengeance. The plan was to take 
off Cardinal Ippolito by poison, and as this could 
not be done without drawing down capital punish- 
ment upon the originator, it was characteristically 
determined that Alfonso should be stabbed to death 
at a masked ball. The spies of the cardinal detected 
the conspiracy, and told all details to their master. 
Giulio fled to Mantua, but the Duke delivered him 
up to Alfonso. . Don Ferrante, also a natural son of 
Este, was to have been placed on the throne of 
Ferrara as successor to Alfonso ; and he also was 
seized and imprisoned. The two princes were to be 
beheaded in the court of the ducal castle of Ferrara ; 
but, when the day of execution came, when block 
and axe stood ready, Alfonso spared the lives of his 



62 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

brothers, and condemned them to perpetual imprison- 
ment. Ariosto wrote an eclogue in praise of the 
deed of his patron, the cardinal, and vilified Giulio. 
This fact alone, to my mind, robs Ariosto's laudations 
of Lucrezia of all moral worth or value. 

Again, Herr Gregorovius asks whether Lucrezia's 
letter to Leo the Tenth, in which she begged for his 
Papal benediction, could have been written by such 
a sinner as she is believed to have been. I answer, 
most emphatically — Yes ! The letter is, indeed, 
highly characteristic of such a woman in such a 
time, and exemplifies curiously her views of her re- 
lations towards the Unseen. She, no doubt, believed 
in her superstitious way in the power of a pope to 
free her from all future consequences resulting from 
the commission of any sin. Herr Gregorovius further 
appeals to women, and asks if they can believe that 
Lucrezia could be guilty of the crimes imputed to 
her? By 'women ' he must mean those of his own 
day : if he had put the same question to the women 
of Italy in Lucrezia's day, he would have received an 
answer but little favourable to his theory. In truth, 
that oscillation of opinion which tends to exculpate 
Lucrezia is a product of the sentimentalism of recent 
times. Some amiable persons do not like to believe 
things which cannot prettily be believed. The Renais- 
sance know its own children better ; though it is un- 
doubtedly difficult for us to realise to our own minds 
the state of morals characteristic of that epoch. The 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 6$ 

chroniclers of the day, such men as Guicciardini, were 
honest and simple-minded recorders of facts of all but 
universal knowledge. It is not difficult to compre- 
hend that they were the hearers of viva voce evidence 
•of such cogency that, if we were to hear it now, it 
would dispel all tendency to sentimental l whitewash- 
ing/ If we knew all that Guicciardini knew, Gregor- 
ovius' occupation would be gone. Alexander and 
Caesar, despite their many heinous crimes, were the 
recipients of the most fulsome flattery ; and, if they 
were, how much more would Lucrezia be the object 
of Renaissance eulogy ! Nor is it an argument 
to say that the chief contemporary accusers, as 
Guicciardini and Sannazaro, wrote in Florence and 
in Naples. The answer is, that then to write in 
Rome history adverse to the Borgia meant certain 
death. Caesar, for a less thing, daggered his father's 
favourite secretary, Pedro Calderon Peretto ; and he 
slew Cervillon and Franceso Troche, the latter also 
a private secretary of the Pope. Still, though he is 
no historian, there lived and wrote in Rome, in the 
days of the Borgias, a diarist whose work belongs to 
the most remarkable of literary productions. This 
man was Burkard, a native of Elsass, and master of 
the ceremonies to five Popes, one of whom was Alex- 
ander the Sixth. To his employers he probably ap- 
peared a simple and harmless pedant ; and they could 
have no idea that the solemn and punctilious official 
was daily recording for history many of the chief 



64 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

events and crimes of the Vatican. Had Caesar or 
Alexander suspected Burkard's daily occupation, his 
life would not have been worth an hour's purchase. 
Roman Catholic writers are very bitter against Burk- 
ard ; but they forget those reports of ambassadors — 
the ' own correspondents ' and reporters of the day 
— to their respective courts, which confirm the record 
of the master of the ceremonies. Many of these am- 
bassadors' reports have disappeared, but the archives 
of the Italian Courts still contain a great number ; 
and no historian of the Renaissance can now dis- 
pense with the assistance furnished by the contem- 
porary reports of the$e — to us even — invaluable 
ambassadors. 

Burkard's diary is written with ultra-Tacitus-like 
brevity and condensation ; and is cold, brief, and 
unimpassioned. If the events which he records ever 
cause any emotion in that official soul, he, at least, 
is careful not to show it. He seems to feel neither 
love nor hate, neither admiration nor indignation. 
Sometimes he is eloquently silent : sometimes he is 
even unusually curt and dry. To my fancy, he 
always writes in a kind of haggard dread, glancing 
uneasily over his shoulder, and trembling at a noise 
in the wall, or at the hint of a coming step. He 
must well have known the danger of his occupation ; 
and the character of his work shows us that he did 
realise the nature of the peril. He records those 
orgies in the Vatican, at one of which fifty of the 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 6$ 

leading Hetairce of Rome assisted. Characteristic of 
the then state of Rome is the evidence, reported by 
Burkard, of one Giorgio Schiavoni, who happened to 
witness the throwing into the Tiber of the corpse of 
the murdered Gandia. Schiavoni, who was privately 
interrogated in the Vatican, stated that he saw two 
men on foot come down to the brink of the river, 
and look carefully about to see whether they were 
observed. Schiavoni was hidden in a boat. Seeing 
no one about, the two men beckoned, and another 
man appeared with a horse, across which lay a dead 
body, the head and arms of which were hanging 
down on one side of the animal, while the legs and 
feet hung down upon the other. The men then, with 
all their strength, flung the corpse into the water. 
Being asked by some man, apparently a cavalier, 
who was hidden in the darkness, whether the body 
were disposed of, they answered, audibly to Schiavoni, 
' Signor, si.' The dark master saw the deceased's 
mantle floating duskily upon the river, and when, 
speaking from out the gloom, he called attention to 
it, the other men threw stones upon it until it sank. 
Schiavoni was asked why he had not mentioned all 
this to the authorities ; and he replied, that he had 
seen in his time a hundred dead bodies thrown into 
the river at the same place, without any inquiry ever 
being made respecting them, so that he had not con- 
sidered the event a matter of any importance. The 
body was, however, that of the Pope's son and Car- 

E 



66 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

dmal's brother, the Duke of Gandia. The clothes 
on the corpse were not disturbed, and thirty ducats 
were in a purse. The body bore nine wounds, one 
in the throat, the others in the head, body, and limbs. 
The face of the Signor present may have looked at 
the time less calmly handsome than was its wont. 
It was, says Guicciardini, ' comune proverbio, che 
il Papa non faceva mai quello che diceva, e il Valen- 
tino non diceva mai quello che faceva.' Caesar may 
have been taciturn on this occasion, but unless Alex- 
ander had known that the one son had murdered the 
other, inquiry would not have slept ; and no ordinary 
murderer would have escaped the doom attaching to 
the assassin of a Pope's son. 

I have now endeavoured to place before my readers 
a narrative, necessarily very brief, but yet, I hope, 
sufficiently comprehensive, of the leading events in 
Ihe careers of the members of the Borgia triumvirate ; 
and I have essayed to cite fairly the evidence for and 
against Lucrezia, and to state clearly the opposing 
views and opinions of assailants and of defendants. 
I am bound to admit that Herr Gregorovius does 
not, in my judgment, succeed in rebutting the con- 
temporary and conclusive evidence against the ' fair 
devil' He has partially succeeded in obscuring facts 
beneath a coat of whitewash, cleverly applied ; but 
it is the office of criticism to remove the covering, 
and to restore the original picture in all its truth 
of drawing and force of colouring. This I have 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 6/ 

hoped to do. When, in the fifth act of Othello, Iago 
wounds Cassio in the leg, and then kills his un- 
fortunate confederate, Roderigo, the very heinousness 
of the almost incredible wickedness provokes from 
spectators the relief of a grim, saturnine humour ; 
and the transaction, especially when Iago is finely 
acted (I have seen Macready play it), produces dry, 
joyless laughter. Such a laughing audience knows 
nothing of the Italian Renaissance, and has never 
read Machiavelli. The very enormity of the atrocities 
which were committed, for so long a time, and with 
so much impunity, by the Borgias, stirs in us almost 
the same irritated feeling of morbid humour; and 
excites in many persons, weakly amiable rather than 
critically clear, a tendency to sentimental incredulity 
The infra-human is thought to be unnatural. And 
yet it was a state of society in which the Borgias 
were possible — nay, were actual — which led the 
maddened Savonarola to his bitter death, which 
stirred Luther into most active life, which revolted 
humanity and ripened the Reformation. We have 
no Shakspeare, we have no help even from Carlyle, 
to assist us in solving that problem of Lucrezia's 
£uilt or innocence which is a problem only in conse- 
quence of the higher morality of later and of better 
times. We are left to our own imaginative insight 
or constructive imagination, and these, I think, con- 
demn her, and judge Lucrezia as she was judged 
bv those who, living with her in her own dav, knew 



68 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

alike the day and knew her. The dark cloud which 
has rested so long upon her reputation, seems, at 
first sight, about to lift, when we begin to listen 
hopefully to Gregorovius ; but, after further study 
and more mature consideration, the black cloud 
settles darkly down in even deeper duskiness. We 
give her up to dramatist and librettist. We feel that 
they can use her name and fame as a representative 
of charm and crime. At once so foul and fair, we 
know that Ferrara does not condone Rome ; and 
that history contains no woman's name at once so 
famous and so infamous. We remain conscious that 
record, and that story, will brand for ever as a name 
of scorn that of the dark and fair, the lovely and 
yet despera tely wicked LUCREZIA BORGIA. 



COUNT STRUENSEE AND QUEEN 
CAROLINE MATHILDE. 

"^HE system of royal marriages which prevailed 
pretty generally throughout Europe up to the 
close of the last century, however admirable politi- 
cally that system might be, did not in all cases 
restrain the impulses of human frailty, or entirely 
secure royal domestic felicity. Monarchs were not 
proof against temptation ; nor did the morals and 
manners which then generally obtained remain with- 
out influence upon the occupants of thrones. Royal 
husbands were often grossly unfaithful : royal wives 
were occasionally — for femininely meaneth furiously 
— tempestuously untrue to marriage vows. History 
and romance record and depict two special cases 
which afford terrible illustrations of the tragedies to 
which such royal marriages sometimes led. 

The first of these cases is historical. It is that of 
George Louis, Electoral Prince of Hanover (after- 
wards our George I. of England) and his princess, 
Sophia Dorothea. Mated with a dull, and coarsely 
unfaithful husband, poor Sophia Dorothea conceived 



yo STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

an infatuated passion for that handsome, dissolute 
scamp, Philip of Konigsmarck. With an insane 
devotion, exhibited through most reckless imprudence,, 
the demented princess abandoned herself to her mad, 
perverse attachment to her worthless lover ; and 
made, defiantly, the scandal of her sin a public 
notoriety. On the night of Sunday, 1st July 1694, 
Konigsmarck (the Prince being then absent) left the 
apartments of the princess after having arranged 
with her the details of their joint flight from 
Hanover. As Philip quitted the palace of Herren- 
hausen, he was set upon by four armed men, and, 
after making some ineffectual resistance, was slaugh- 
tered. While the unhappy gallant was dying, that 
jealous old harridan, the Countess Platen — who also 
had loved par amours the bewitching Philip — 
stamped upon his mouth in order to tread out his 
dying curses. His body was burnt next day ; and 
it was fondly hoped that secrecy would, in that 
way, be secured. Sophia Dorothea, then twenty - 
eight years of age, was immured for thirty-two long 
years in the castle of Ahlden ; and when she died 
there, the tragedy was complete. In travelling over 
the dreary sand-wastes of the Luneburger Heide, I 
have often thought of the long martyrdom of the 
guilty, but sorely tempted and heavily punished 
woman — a woman once so witty, bright, imperious 
— I have tried to fancy the lonely imprisonment of a 
princess whose heart was full of such memories and 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. J I 

sorrows, while her equally guilty husband wai. 
reigning phlegmatically as a king, and was solaced 
by the society of many mistresses. 

The other case — and for this we must turn to 
romance — is the Princess's tragedy recounted by 
Thackeray in ' Barry Lyndon.' If the case be not an 
actual fact, it is yet a truth ; and is based upon the 
necessary result of those inhuman royal marriage 
customs of old Europe. The Princess Olivia, follow- 
ing in the steps of Sophia Dorothea, falls madly in 
love with a certain young De Magny, who, like 
Philip, is worthless and is dissolute. She wrongs her 
husband, Prince Victor, who, when her frantic guilt 
is made clear, procures De Magny to be poisoned in 
prison : and, in prison also, causes the mysterious 
Monsieur de Strasbourg to behead, at a quite private 
execution, the demented, guilty Princess. ' It had 
best be done now that she has fainted/ said the 
masked Prince Victor to the headsman, in that dark, 
vaulted room in the Owl Tower. This royal tragedy 
occurred in 1769. 

The scope and object of the present essay is to 
depict that other royal marriage tragedy — prefigured 
by the two parallel cases just recited — of the hapless 
Queen of Denmark, Caroline Mathilde, and of the 
adventurer Struensee. 

Three persons, two of them royal, one of lowly 
birth, born respectively in England, in Germany, in 
Denmark, gravitated together under the decree of an 



72 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

inexorable Fate, and became involved in a most 
tragic drama of sin, of love, of intrigue, of misery — of 
death. 

Christian VII., King of Denmark, was born in 
Copenhagen, January 29, 1749. He was the son of 
King Friedrich V., and of Louise, daughter of 
George II. of England. His mother died 175 '1, and 
his father then married Juliane Marie, Princess of 
Braunschweig- Wolfenbiittel ; who became the mother 
of Prince Friedrich, and was the stepmother of 
Christian VII. Friedrich V. died January 14, 1766. 

Caroline Mathilde was born in London, July 22, 
175 1. She was the daughter of Frederick Louis, 
Prince of Wales, who was the son of George II., 
and her mother was Auguste of Sachsen-Coburg. 

Johann Friedrich Struensee was born August 5, 
1737, in Halle. His father, Adam Struensee, an 
obscure clergyman and a preacher in the St Ulrichs- 
kirche, was the son of a cloth-worker in Neu Ruppin. 
His mother was Maria Dorothea, the daughter of a 
Dr Carl. 

The mother of Christian and the father of Caroline 
Mathilde were children of George II., and the Prince 
and Princess were therefore first cousins. 

In 1757 Struensee removed to Altona, where he 
practised with some success as a physician. His 
characteristics were an esurient vanity, a restless 
ambition, and a love of pleasure. At one time he 
contemplated emigration to the East Indies. An 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. . 73 

ardent disciple of Rousseau and of Voltaire, he 
became a Freethinker and Materialist, and was of 
opinion that /wenn der Mensch stiirbe, Nichts weiter 
zu hoffen oder zu fiirchten sey ' — i.e., that after death 
nothing was to be hoped or feared for man. He had 
a talent for self-assertion, and for pushing himself 
into notice. He was fond of ■ heroic cures,' which, 
when successful, brought him into notice, and 
acquired for him reputation. His manners were 
insinuating and his personality was imposing. His 
-eyes were blue and penetrating ; his hair was light- 
brown ; he inclined to stoutness, but was well built 
and of a striking figure. He w T as full of energy and 
tact, and succeeded in making friends and in extend- 
ing influence. On April 5, 1768, he reached the 
turning-point in his career, and obtained the post of 
Leibarzt, or ' body physician/ to Christian VII., 
though this appointment was only to be given to him 
during the extent of a journey of some months, 
which the young king proposed to make. 

Christian himself was badly brought up and badly 
-educated. His father seems to have taken no care 
for the young Prince, and his stepmother preferred 
her own son, Prince Friedrich. Christian was placed 
under governors, by one of whom, the Kammerherr 
Detlev von Reventlpw, he was treated with extra- 
ordinary severity. When, in 1766, he succeeded to 
the government, he was but ill-fitted for the cares 
and the duties of his rank. As a young lad, he was 



74 • STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

full of boyish pranks and of wanton mischief. The 
over-strictness of his early training disposed him to 
excesses of all kinds so soon as he became free from 
all restraint. 

Caroline Mathilde was well brought up by a 
tender mother, and was an accomplished princess. 
She might be called beautiful, and was sprightly, 
bright witted, and charming. When a proposal 
of marriage— a proposal dictated by political expedi- 
ency — came from Denmark to England, Caroline 
Mathilde, then only fifteen years old, fell into a 
melancholy at the prospect of exchanging the happy 
home of her youth for a cold and far-off northern 
throne to be shared with a stranger. However, the 
marriage was determined upon without much regard 
for the young girl's natural feelings ; and on October 
I, 1766, Caroline Mathilde was married by proxy, 
at St James's, to Christian VII. Her elder brother, 
our George III., represented the absent bridegroom. 

The day before her departure from the England 
which she loved, and which loved her, the young 
bride was plunged in sorrowful thought. Her mother 
gave the girl, as a talisman, a ring w r ith the motto, 
' Bring me happiness ! ' and the unhappy princess, 
for whom we can yet deeply feel, left her country 
and her home, her mother, and her brothers and 
sisters, for a new life and a foreign throne, for an 
unseen husband — and for a most tragic future 
fate. 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 75 

She had a stormy voyage, and was fifteen days 
at sea. At Roskilde she first met the King, who 
seemed charmed, as well he might be, with the 
grace and beauty of his gentle, modest, but brilliant 
consort. 

For a short time, everything seemed to promise 
happiness to the young married couple ; but very 
soon a rift within the lute began to mar the music 
of their wedded life. The young Queen soon showed 
coldness — why we can easily guess — to her husband ; 
and he widened the breach between them by the 
crassest and the coarsest infidelities. The Queen 
was at this time just over fifteen, and the King a 
little more than seventeen years of age. Christian, 
when plunging into his course of debauchery, took 
a line which was, for a king, almost original. He 
did not devote himself to intrigues with the fine 
ladies, with the frail fair ones of the Court, but he, 
under the guidance of Count Hoick, found his delight 
among the Hetairae. His first mistress was a wanton 
known by the piquante name of StiefelettkatJirinc ; * 
his second was one renowned under the title of 
Myladi. The King's brother-in-law, the Landgraf 
Karl von Hessen-Kassel, who married Christian's 
youngest sister, Louise, was well acquainted with 

* When Christian was away on his tour, Stiefelettkathrine (who was 
daughter of under-officer Benthaken) was exported to Hamburg, and 
was then incarcerated in the Zuchihatis, or House of Correction. 
When Struensee attained to power, he procured her release, and the 
renowned Hetaira married an advocate, one Maes. 



76 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

all that happened at the Court of his brother-in-law, 
and has left a valuable record of his knowledge in 
his ' Memoires de mon temps/ tells us 'II (Christian) 
fit la connaissance de la plus renommee a Copen- 
hague. On la nommait Myladi. II courait avec 
elle la nuit sur les rues, brisait des lanternes, cassait 
des vitres, enfin, menait une vie terrible/ 

This most scandalous conduct of a young married 
king, wedded to a wife, pure, beautiful, and amiable, 
led, of course, to domestic unhappiness, and soon 
became matter of public notoriety. 

On the 28th of January 1768. a prince (afterwards 
Frederick VI. of Denmark) was born to the King 
and Queen. The Queen was not yet seventeen. 

His Majesty then determined to make a tour in 
other States of Europe, and decided that the Queen 
should not accompany him. Caroline Mathilde was 
left in solitary state in Copenhagen, and had her 
infant for her only solace. The young Queen must 
have been very lonely in that Court of Denmark. 
She was deeply attached to her child ; but she can- 
not have liked the absence on such a tour of such 
a husband. 

The Landgraf Karl thus paints Christian at the 
period of this journey: — ' II (le roi) manquait en- 
tierement d'application, mais avait beaucoup d'esprit, 
qui etait tres-vif meme, avait la repartie extremement 
prompte, tres-gaie, fort bonne memoire, en un mot 
un jeune homme charmant qu'on ne put qu' aimer. 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. JJ 

II avait une passion demesuree de connaitre des 
femmes/ etc. The tour lasted for seven months. It 
was a triumph of sensual pleasure and of social 
success. On such visits to foreign Courts, the young 
King showed to great advantage. He was pleased, 
and was anxious to please. He was naturally most 
delighted with London and with Paris. In London 
he lodged in St James's Palace, and was treated with 
great distinction. Frequent festivities were given 
in his honour. His stepmother, the widowed Princess 
of Wales, annoyed him terribly by her persistent 
inquiries after the health and happiness of Caroline 
Mathilde. Cette chere maman triembete terrib lenient, 
confessed the King, who was not just then de- 
voted to conjugal duty. He discovered a peculiar 
liking for the beautiful Lady Talbot. Christian en- 
deavoured to return the hospitalities of London by 
a grand masked ball, to which three thousand per- 
sons of rank and distinction were invited. He also 
visited Garrick in the retired actor's country house 
on the Thames. 

He saw the Paris of Louis XV., and w r as charmed 
with the gay, wicked Court and city. * Mais vous 
Chretien, vous etes adore/ Paris told him. and the 
handsome, pleasure-loving young King heard gladly 
the flattering compliment. He met d'Alembert, 
Diderot, Helvetius, Marmontel, and was kissed by 
the dames de la halle. Madame de Flavecourt 
excited Christian's particular admiration. His stay 



yS STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

in Paris was one round of brilliant and depraved 
pleasure. 

But below all royal honours and public festivities, 
there was another and more secret source of pleasure 
for the amorous king. Graf Hoick was Christian's 
Grand-Maitre des plaisirs, and assisted his monarch 
to continual orgies of the wildest and most sensual 
debauchery. The young husband w 7 as devoted to 
sexual delights, and wallowed in unrestrained volup- 
tuousness, to the great injury of his health. Struensee 
was his travelling physician, and may have had enough 
to do to repair the waste of pleasure ; but there is no 
record of any protest on the part of the doctor 
against the soul and body-destroying courses of the 
wanton King. It was not usual for a highwayman 
to adopt a white horse for professional purposes ; 
and the wily Struensee did not repel his patron by 
any pretence of purity or assertion of morality. He 
had no desire to disgust Christian by playing the 
part of mentor. He did not pose as an adviser 
against evil. He sought to gain the King's favour 
by pandering to the King's worst excesses ; and 
exerted himself to be the sympathetic physician of 
a boundless voluptuary. Hoick was an entire 
favourite of the dissolute Christian ; and to Hoick 
the astute doctor attached himself. 

Struensee returned with Christian to Copenhagen, 
and on the stage of that city the three persons who 
were to have so terrible an influence, each on the 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 79 

others, met together. Struensee was presented to 
the Queen. 

When Christian returned to Denmark he was a 
changed man, and the change was for the worse. 
His Majesty had 

' Overmuch consumed his royal person/ 

His health was undermined, his nerves were shattered, 
his temper was uncertain. Contrasted with the joys 
of Paris and of London, he did not find Denmark or 
the Queen desirable. He had become the servant of 
sin, and, with a weakened will and failing powers, he 
yet lived chiefly for ' pleasure/ It was, however, 
noticed that the King's manners had become finer 
and more quiet since his return from travel. 

Caroline Mathilde, as was natural, detested Hoick. 
She knew the services which the favourite rendered 
to his master ; and she had a shrewd idea of what a 
travelling physician to her husband meant. Hence 
she at first distrusted Struensee. Hoick was over- 
whelmed with kingly favours ; and the doctor began 
to climb. Hoick little suspected that the obscure and 
complaisant medical man would soon supersede him, 
as first favourite at Court. 

Struensee was appointed Leibai'zt to the King in 
Denmark. His salary was to be iooo dollars, and 
he received a gift of 500 to pay his debts. On May 
12, 1769, Struensee was appointed EtatsratJi, or 
Councillor of State, and had the right of attending 



8o STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

the Court. When the King and Queen, in the 
summer of 1769, were residing at Friedrichsberg,. 
Struensee lived in the castle. On January 17, 1770, 
he was called upon to dwell in the royal palace of 
Christiansburg in Copenhagen. His position was 
still so uncertain that .he tried, but in vain, to 
reconcile the Queen to Hoick. Struensee had taken 
warily the first steps on the steep and slippery path 
of Court favour ; but he possessed all the cunning 
and the skill which were necessary to render his foot- 
hold secure. There was a wisdom in him which 
guided his ambition to act in safety. 

On May 2, 1770, he successfully inoculated the 
Crown Prince, and the child was saved from small- 
pox. This service won for Struensee the full favour 
of the Queen, and he was appointed reader to the 
King, and Cabinet-Secretary to the Queen, with a 
yearly salary of 1500 thalers. On May 4, a year 
only after having been appointed Etatsrath, he was 
made Conferenz-Rath. 

This rapid rise of a foreigner, who was not even 
noble, excited great surprise. The listless King, 
weary and exhausted from satiety of sensuality, was 
guided in all his actions by^the Queen and by Struen- 
see ; and Hoick began to feel a just apprehension of 
the progress of the new favourite. 

Their Majesties made a short tour in their own 
dominions. On this occasion, the Queen, who was 
still bent upon getting rid of Graf Hoick, went with 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 8 1 

the lethargic King. On June 13, the royal travellers 
arrived at Gottorp Castle, which was the residence 
of the Landgraf Karl, and of the King's sister, Louise. 
Struensee was now helping the Queen to depose 
Hoick, and, as a counterpoise to the falling favourite, 
the Kammerjunker Enevold Brandt, Hoick's great- 
est enemy, was recalled from banishment, and was 
appointed chamberlain to the King. Brandt waited 
upon the surprised Hoick. * I think, Monsieur le 
Comte,' said Brandt, ■' that you are not afraid of 
ghosts ? ' To which Hoick replied, bitterly, ' Oh, non, 
Monsieur le Chambellan, je ne crains pas les spectres, 
mais les revenants.' The Landgraf Karl records of 
this royal visit to his castle, speaking of the Queen : — ■ 

6 Elle etait toujours embarrassee avec moi des que Struensee 
etait present. On dinait avec gene a la table du Roi. La reine 
jouait alors au quinze : j'etais place a sa droite, Struensee a sa 
gauche, puis Brandt, nouvellement arrive, et Warnstedt, page de 
la chambre fihit la partie. Je n'aime pas a me retracer les 
facons et les propos que Struensee se permettait publiquement 
d'adresser a la Reine, appuyant son coudesur la table a celui de 
la Reine. J'avoue que mon cceur etait brise de voir cette Prin- 
cesse, douee de tant d'esprit et d'agrement, tomber a ce point 
et en de si mauvaises mains. Le Roi et la Reine allaient a 
Traventhal avec toute la cour qui les avait suivis a Gottorp. 
Nous ne fumes point du voyage, ma femme et moi. On ne nous 
le proposa point, et avec raison, car Traventhal etait choisi pour 
les orgies les moins decentes.' 

The Landgraf was sharpsighted enough to detect 
the relations which already subsisted between the 
Queen and Struensee. 

Hoick's influence with the King was on the wane, 

F 



82 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

partly because it was no longer easy to amuse His 
Majesty after the old fashion ; and a cabal, composed 
of Struensee, Brandt, and Graf Rantzau-Ascheberg — 
with the Queen behind the three — succeeded in pro- 
curing the dismissal of Graf Hoick ; who was allowed 
a pension of 2000 thalers. The Queen had triumphed 
over one of her enemies ; but she had allied herself 
with an even more dangerous foe. 

Brandt was commencing that splendid Court career, 
as assistant to Struensee, which in a short time was to 
conduct him to the same scaffold on which his master 
was to perish. The third ally in the new combina- 
tion, Graf Rantzau-Ascheberg, was the man destined, 
a little later on, to bring his former colleagues to ruin 
and to death. 

Schack zu Rantzau-Ascheberg was descended from 
one of the most ancient noble families of Holstein. 
Born in 17 17, he was Major-General at thirty-five, 
and was then suddenly dismissed. He took refuge in 
Russia. Winning the confidence of the Empress 
Catharine, and of Count Orloff, he took an active part 
in the conspiracy against Peter III. Returning to 
Denmark, he found favour from Christian VII., but 
was again suddenly dismissed in consequence of a 
Court intrigue. He was separated from his wife, who, 
in consequence, fell into melancholy madness. The 
Count was a man of his day, and led a life of dissolute 
gallantry. He had been involved in many duels, and 
in one of a specially tragic character. Having seduced 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 83 

a young lady, he had to meet her father ; and the 
father fell. Rantzau was inconsolable. He provided 
liberally for all the family, and did all in his power to 
remedy the irrevocable ill. He married his lady 
victim with the left hand. Rantzau was a man of 
distinctive ability. Struensee rejoiced with reason at 
obtaining so able an ally ; but he learned too late 
that Rantzau was far too able for his purposes. 

Brandt was born in 1738, in Copenhagen. In 175.5 he 
became Ho/junker. He had studied law, and rose to 
be assessor c»f the highest court of law. He was of 
good family, and had both will and talent. Attach- 
ing himself to Court life, he was appointed Kammer- 
juiiker, and joined his fortunes to those of the splendid 
Struensee, who w 7 as then far-shining, ' like a blazing 
tar-barrel.' Struensee, in his capacity of physician, 
undertook the training of the little Crown Prince, and 
subjected the unfortunate child to a most Spartan 
regimen. He was afterwards accused of having de- 
signed to put an end to the life of the heir to the 
Crown. The child was three years old, and was of 
weak constitution. He was subjected to a cold diet 
only, consisting of vegetables, rice, and milk ; he was 
lightly clothed, was allowed no fire in winter, and 
went about with bare feet. At length Berger, another 
Court physician, interfered strongly, and introduced 
such ameliorations in the child's treatment as might 
be consistent with the prolongation of his existence. 
Friedrich VI. died ultimately of physical exhaustion. 



84 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

It is a proof of the influence wKich Struensee had 
acquired over the Queen that she should allow such 
unnatural treatment of the boy who, though he was 
Christian's son, was also her own child. The King 
was supine in the matter. 

At this period her Majesty excited some scandal 
and offence in Copenhagen by frequently appearing 
in public on horseback, in masculine costume. The 
attention which this conduct excited is proved by the 
number of pictures still to be seen in the Royal 
Library, in Copenhagen, of the fair young Queen in 
this dashing and piquant attire. May it not be that 
Caroline Mathilde was then losing something of her 
delicacy, was deteriorating in modesty and self-respect, 
in consequence of her defiant life and coarsening 
manners ? 

The King himself was the true ally of any lover of 
the Queen. Outraged as a woman, insulted as a wife ; 
with a husband who could leave a celestial bed to 
prey on garbage, her woman's joy in revenge led her to 
lend an ear to the suit of the unscrupulous man whose 
power could yield her support, whose love could afford 
her the means of vengeance. Caroline Mathilde, not 
lofty enough for patience, was woman enough to repay 
conjugal wrong with connubial infidelity. Her long 
revolt of indignation broke forth in a liaison which 
yielded her a feeling of triumph, a sense of requital.. 
The volcano of her excited feeling had to be snowed 
over by the forms and ceremonies of her high station, 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 85 

by external duties performed in the fierce light that 
beats upon a throne. Whatever sense of wrong might 
exasperate her heart, she had to be careful of appear- 
ances. What hypocrite like lawless love ? Embold- 
ened by time, and by the blindness of the besotted 
King, she gradually forgot her caution ; and all Den- 
mark, except its monarch, became cognisant of her 
guilty amour. Christian VI L, with a heart hardened, 
a soul coarsened, the will weakened, and the mind 
confused by excess in riotous debauchery, was wholly 
blind to the conduct of his fair young wife. He had 
become a puppet and a tool, and was glad to be 
relieved by clearer wills of the burden of State affairs. 
He lived languidly for pleasure, and the Landgraf 
Karl records that his physician injured the King's 
health yet further by giving him stimulants to increase 
his amatory enjoyments. Christian had never been 
taught, and had never wished to learn, the duties of 
an absolute monarch. His life-theorem was indulgence 
in sensuality. It was over an unfenced precipice that 
Caroline Mathilde r pushed by a vicious and worthless 
husband, fell into the abyss of xrime. She had no 
standard by which, in her debauched Court, she could 
judge of nobleness in man. But, whatever excuse there 
may be for her guilt, there can be none for the conduct of 
the base and underbred man,who,forhis own vanity and 
interest, could employ all his influence and all his arts 
to make a victim of the: wronged and angry Queen. She 
sinned ; but she wasmore sinned against than sinning. 



86 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Struensee, a true beggar on horseback, took an 
ever more active and audacious part in public affairs. 
He became insolent to opponents, arrogant to de- 
pendents, despotic to the Crown. Bernsdorff and 
other high functionaries were dismissed in disgrace. 
The Kammerjunker v. Koppern, the Kammerherr v. 
Warnstedt, were both deprived of all offices and posi- 
tion, merely for having spoken against the favourite. 
A successful courtier may be a gross failure as a 
statesman ; but no favourite failed more completely 
than did Struensee. ' Das Regierimgsgeschaft ist ein 
selir grosses Metier' — ' The business of government is 
a very great undertaking/ says Goethe. Not many 
men, trained only to medicine, could develop in two 
years into successful, absolute, irresponsible rulers of 
the State ; and Struensee, who was a mere windbag, 
possessed none of the great qualities necessary for 
his high office. His reforms were not successes. 
Good was to be done in order that good might be 
done to Struensee ; but he had not the capacity for 
State reforms. 

He expedited the administration of law, and in so 
far did good. He instituted a Foundling Hospital 
and gambling hells. He introduced freedom of the 
press. This step was taken with a view to popu- 
larity ; but as Struensee's unpopularity was growing 
at the time, the freedom was ' abused,' and had to be 
withdrawn. One result was the growth of Sekmuts- 
bldttern; surely then, as now, an undesirable thing. 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. Sy 

A Copenhagen journal asked the pregnant question — 
* Can the paramour of a married woman be the sincere 
friend and true adviser of that woman's husband ? ' 
Nor was the Queen spared. The most shameless 
reports about her unlawful relations with Struensee 
were circulated, until the ' excesses' of the press were 
bridled. 

Beyond his general condition of weak understand- 
ing, the King had occasional attacks of positive 
insanity ; but his Majesty, who could speak Danish, 
rose in the love of the Danes, because they believed 
him to be the puppet and the prisoner of the minister. 
Struensee gab sick alle ersinnliche MiiJie dem K'dnig 
das Leben angenehm zu machen — gave himself all 
conceivable trouble to render the King's life pleasant ; 
nor was he neglectful of the favour of the Queen. 

On July 7, 17-71, the Queen was delivered of a 
daughter, christened Louise Auguste. Concerning 
the paternity of this child, history has its perplexities. 
It is improbable that Christian was its father. Horace 
Walpole, writing to Sir H. Mann, says that the amour 
of the Queen with her ' medical Prime Minister,' was 
a theme of current gossip in London ; and he ex- 
presses, in his light way, his doubts about the paternity 
of this infant — doubts which were, as it would seem, 
generally entertained in England and in Denmark. 

The Queen cared nothing for political reforms ; but 
her woman's heart, empty and sore, did need passionate 
personal devotion, and he who would give her even the 



88 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

show of love might take the reality of power as his 
payment. Struensee could not give her love ; but he 
could and did dishonour her with a simulacrum of 
love, disguised in base passion, and he took advantage 
of his opportunities to profit by her weakness and her 
desolate position. Struensee said afterwards of him- 
self that his demon was sensuality ; but one devil 
seldom reigns alone. He makes place for others, and 
Struensee did not reckon the demons of vanity, of 
self-seeking, of ambition that knows no touch of 
greatness or of conscience. Whirled aloft by singular 
circumstances, he was yet in very essence vulgar of 
soul ; was not equal to his fortune, and remained 
always a coward and an upstart. In the day, in the 
society, and in the Court of Caroline Mathilde. the 
tie of wedlock was but a slip-knot, and she had 
example, as well as provocation, to lead her into sin 
and shame. 

,; Struensee's reforms, even when they contained some 
good, did yet more evil than good : they were the off-r 
spring of his own caprice, and were carried out with- 
out consideration as they were devised without wisdom. 
He knew nothing of Denmark, of men, of -laws, -of 
institutions, of government. Sudden changes, vio- 
lently introduced, and carried into effect with high- 
handed despotism, are not true organisms. A 
defiant Freethinker, with power to make his meaning 
law, Struensee deeply outraged the religious feeling 
of the nation ; nor could the spectacle of such a man, 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 8g 

in possession of despotic power, conciliate any 
genuine reformer. 

One of his early steps was to do away with the 
Council of State. Henceforth the King was to rule 
alone and absolutely ; but every one knew that 
that meant only the absolute rule of the Queen 
and Struensee. The King was to be his own 
Foreign Minister. Russia so strongly resented the 
new regime in Denmark, that she threatened to send 
a fleet to bombard Copenhagen. The English am- 
bassador was rudely treated by the insolent favourite, 
and kept aloof from the Court. A ( Mathilde Order ' 
was created, with which the Queen's partisans and 
friends were to be decorated ; and, of course, 
Struensee was one of the first recipients. The 
Queen-Mother and Prince Friedrich were driven 
from Court. A cordon was drawn round His 
Majesty, and his nobles and officers were excluded 
from his presence. Brandt, in the absence of 
Struensee, was always near the person of the 
monarch, and kept all others from access to Christian. 
It was generally considered that the Mathilde ii-Orden 
was intended to lower the value of the old Dannebrog 
and Elephant Orders. The dismissals of objection- 
able officials continued. The order for dismissal 
was, during the sway of Struensee, carried to the 
victim by a royal groom mounted on a cream- 
coloured horse; and it became a standing inquiry 
in Copenhagen, i With whom has the cream been 



go STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

last? ; His army changes and reductions were 
grossly unwise and greatly unpopular. He dissolved 
the King's Life Guards. This corps d 'elite consisted 
of picked men, and the officers were all nobles. 
It would seem that the Royal Guards were much 
loved by the Copenhageners, and the public indig- 
nation at this step was extreme. Struensee's real 
object was — and there was no object to which he 
clung more tenaciously — to humiliate the nobility ; 
but the dissolution of the body-guards was looked 
upon by the public as a slight to the King. The 
Queen loyally supported her paramour in all his 
measures, and shared his ever-growing unpopularity. 

When the order which commanded their dissolu- 
tion was read to the Guards, they rode into their 
barracks to deliver up their horses and then to 
disperse. Struensee happened to meet them when 
they were so engaged. Probably the corps was in 
no very pleasant mood, and men and officers may 
have looked threateningly upon the hated favourite* 
Struensee's craven heart took fright. He dreaded 
some strong expression of their discontent and 
dislike to him— and fairly ran away ; but when he 
ceased running, he tore a leaf out of his pocket- 
book and wrote on it with pencil a hurried order 
for the dismissal of Count Ahlefeldt, the King's 
Cabinet Secretary, whom he connected with the 
conduct of the Guard. In his day of highest power, 
when supreme over State and King, Otto von 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 9 1 

Falkenskjold, perhaps the noblest and ablest of 
Struense.e's adherents, ventured to warn the despot 
of the fickleness of fortune and of the dangers that 
he was incurring — without effect. The besotted 
adventurer believed that he had chained Fortune 
to his car. 

And he seemed at the time to have judged rightly. 
To superficial appearance his position was secure 
and his power increasing. In 1 771, he was promoted 
by the King to be Kabinetsminister, with absolute 
power ; the orders and the signature of the Minister 
to have the same force and validity as those of the 
King himself. 

This was indeed Ego et Rex Mens, Such an 
appointment was unknown in Denmark ; such power 
had never been conferred upon a subject. The 
Queen was delighted ; but many of Struensee's 
friends fell from him, partly terrified by the unheard- 
of audacity of the measure ; while national indigna- 
tion grew deep and dangerous. 

In 1 77 1 also, Struensee and his chief adherent, 
Brandt, were raised to the nobility, each with the 
title of Count. No such power and position had 
ever been attained by any man in the Kingdom. 
Struensee was literally all-powerful. Internal affairs 
and foreign relations were administered solely ac- 
cording to his will and pleasure. All titles, honours, 
degrees, and offices were held only by his favour. 
He invented for himself an ornate and boastful coat 



92 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

of arms. All the world wondered at the upstart's 
success. With Struensee, as with other men of his 
class, lowliness had been his young ambition's 
ladder ; but that ladder was kicked down so soon 
as he achieved success. 

The King made presents of 10,000 thalers to the 
Queen, and of 6000 thalers each to Struensee and 
Brandt. At his trial it was one of the charges 
against Struensee that he had altered the figures on 
the warrant from 6000 to 60,000. It was improbable 
that the King should give larger sums to Struensee 
and Brandt, than he did to the Queen. Jenssen- 
Tusch estimates that Struensee, during his two years 
of power, obtained quite enormous sums "from the 
Treasury, though it is impossible to ascertain ac- 
curately the moneys he had received for himself and 
for .his adherents. He had imported into Denmark 
his brother, who was made Justiz-rath, and after- 
wards became the controller of the national finances. 
After this appointment had been made, Struensee, 
when he found it right to reward himself by grants 
of Crown money, could bestow upon himself, without 
troubling any one— even the King — such sums as he 
might think a fitting recompense for his own merits 
and services. 

Heartless and haughty, Struensee, in dealing with 
his own supporters, used tools rather than loved 
friends. Graf Rantzau-Ascheberg became embittered 
against the too insolent favourite, and began to 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 93 

coalesce with Colonels von Koller and von Sames, 
and other friends, in opposition to the Minister. 
Brandt, warned by anonymous letters, and terrified 
by the evidences of national disaffection, wrote to 
Struensee, expressing a wish to retire to Paris, and 
requesting a yearly allowance of 120,000 francs. 
Brandt, in his letter, uses the memorable expres- 
sion, — ' Kein Despot hat sicJi jemals eine solche Gewatt 
angemasst oder auf solche Weise sie geiibt wie Sie ' — 
. 4 No despot has ever acquired such power, or has 
used it in such a w r ay as you have.' He adds, ' Sie 
haben jedermann Schrecken eingejagt : alle zittern vor 
Ihnen .... von Schrecken sind Alle ergriffen : man 
s pricht, man trinkt, man isst — alles mit Beben ' — l You 
have infused terror into every one : all tremble 
before you .... every one is seized with fear ; 
men speak, drink, eat — always in trembling.' 'Even 
the Queen,' says Brandt, 'has no longer a will of 
her own.' 

Struensee replied in writing and at some length. 
He will not allow Brandt to fly. He says, ' as regards 
my conduct towards Her Majesty, I do not permit 
you to judge it:' and adds, with almost a touch of 
pathos, — ' You are the only person who is in posses- 
sion of all my secrets ; and to whom I have, on all 
occasions, unfolded myself without any reserve.' 

So Brandt stayed and waited — for death. 

Meanwhile the air was becoming electrical, and 
there was danger in it for Struensee. The patriotism 



94 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND. ETC. 

of the nation was revolted by the spectacle of a Court 
favourite — 'a man without experience, without honour, 
without religion, without truth or honesty, or knowledge 
of the laws ' — who was the lord of all, the lover of the 
Queen ; and who was supposed to have designs upon 
the King's life. Struensee himself became afraid of 
* meeting with Concini's fate.' He received threaten- 
ing letters, and the streets were placarded with 
denunciations of him. Furious attacks upon him 
were thrown into the King's carriage. There was a 
mutiny among the sailors, who brought their griev- 
ances to the castle at Hirschholm. The Court fled. 
Struensee showed his usual cowardice, and yielded 
to the malcontents. The Minister of Marine, von 
Rumohr, was, however, summarily dismissed. Next 
came an uprising of the silkworkers ; and they carried 
their point. Then Struensee surrounded the palace 
with a cordon of guards ; and he appointed at a high 
rate of pay his own special bodyguard. Keith, the 
English ambassador, offered Struensee a large sum of 
money if he would take himself off, and trouble the 
Commonweal no longer. Such an offer could only 
have been made to a man whose character and prin- 
ciples were thoroughly despised and despicable. 
Supported as he w 7 as by King and Queen, Struensee 
could only be dethroned by something in the nature 
of a plot ; though, if his guards were not trustworthy, 
he might easily fall a victim to popular fury. The 
nation was resolved upon his destruction, and it only 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 95 

remained to find the persons who were able to carry 
the national will into effect. 

In such cases, the needful persons are seldom 
wanting. 

The conspirators, if they may be so called, at last 
obtained the co-operation of the Queen-Mother and 
of her son ; and the following persons became leagued 
together to effect the fall, and even the death, by 
law, of the arrogant and unprincipled Minister. 

The Queen-Mother, Juliane Marie ; her son, the 
Hereditary Prince Friedrich ; Graf Rantzau-Asche- 
berg ; Owe Horg Guldberg ; Colonel von Eichstedt ; 
Colonel von Koller and Kammerjunker Magnus 
Beringskjold. 

The two colonels answered for the troops ; Guldberg, 
a patriotic Dane, was secretary to Prince Friedrich ; 
Koller was a strong, determined soldier. Whatever 
other motives may have played a part, it is certain 
that all the plotters were indignant at the reign of 
Struensee, and were revolted by the Queen's illicit 
relations towards him. No one had any purpose to 
injure the King. 

With such plots speedy action is indispensable. 
Left to ripe and ripe, they rot and rot. The con- 
spirators, who were risking their heads, lost no time. 

On the night of January 16-17, l 77 2 > there was a 
bal pare en Domino in the palace. The Queen was 
radiant : unusually gay and full of coquetry. Struen- 
see was present ; he continually danced with Caroline 



g6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Mathilde, and the brilliant Court festivity lasted until 
two in the morning. 

■l Two hours later, when tired revelry had sunk into 
deep repose, four of the conspirators, headed by the 
Queen-Mother, stole through the hushed passages of 
the sleeping castle, and stood round the King's bed. 
Their object was, they told him, ' to free land and 
King/ 

The King's terror lent him temporary lucidity. 
He, at first, refused to believe anything that could 
touch the honour of the Queen ; but Juliane Marie 
and Guldberg soon carried conviction to the mind of 
the husband and the King. 

His Majesty wrote a short note to the Queen : 
' Comme vous n'avez pas voulu suivre les bons con- 
seils, ce n'est pas ma faute, si je me trouve oblige de 
vous faire conduire a Kronenbourg.' He then signed 
a warrant, authorising Eichstedt and Koller to take 
the measures necessary to save the King and the 
Fatherland ; and he further signed warrants for the 
arrest of Struensee, Brandt, and the rest of that 
faction. These warrants were countersigned by the 
Prince. 

The arrest of Struensee was effected by von Koller. 
The great Minister submitted patiently and with a 
trembling depression to his fate. He tried to seize a 
small etui, but von Koller snatched it from him, and 
it was found to contain poison. Bound hand and 
foot, the man, so recently all-powerful, was hurried 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 97 

into a carriage and driven to the citadel, in which he 
was incarcerated. 

Colonel von Sames undertook the more dangerous 
task of seizing Graf Brandt, who met the colonel and 
the guard with a drawn sword, a w T eapon which 
Brandt well knew how to use. Disarmed by the 
soldiers, he also was securely bound. He then said, 
■* Eh bien, Monsieur, je vous suivrai tranquillement.' 
Brandt also was carried in a coach to the citadel, and 
there imprisoned. His courage and cheerful fortitude 
contrasted strongly with Struensee's abject cowardice. 

A more delicate task was entrusted to Graf 
Rantzau-Ascheberg, who undertook the arrest of the 
Queen. Told by her women that the Count wished 
to see her by order of the King, the terrified Caroline 
Mathilde cried out, ' Hasten to send for Struensee. 
Let him come to me directly! 5 She was told that 
Struensee w r as already in confinement, and she 
exclaimed, ' Verrathen ! verloren ! Ewig verloren ! ■ 
* Betrayed ! lost ! For ever lost ! ' The Count 
and three officers were then admitted, and he 
presented to the Queen the King's letter, adding his 
advice to her to submit to the commands of His 
Majesty. ; The King's commands !' she said bitterly : 
'commands of w r hich he understands nothing; com- 
mands extorted from his imbecility by shameful 
treachery ! A Queen does not obey such commands.' 
Rantzau urged that his orders admitted of no delay 
in their execution. ■ I will obey no order until I 

G 



98 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

shall have seen the King/ replied the passionate- 
Queen. ' Let me go to him ; I must — I will speak 
to him ! ' This could not be permitted, and Caroline 
Mathilde gave way to a paroxysm of wild despair. 
She shrieked for help, until she was told that none 
could hear her. Then she tried to throw herself out 
of the window, but one of the officers seized and 
restrained her. She tore his hair, and struggled with 
her captors in a desperate fury, until she fainted from 
exhaustion. Dressed by her women, she melted into 
tears. 'Je n'ai rien fait; le roi sera juste.' Then 
she declared that she would not leave without her 
children. It was explained that she could not be 
allowed to take the Crown Prince, but that her 
infant daughter might accompany her. Rantzau 
offered her his hand to conduct her to the carriage, 
but she repulsed .him with, ' Loin avec vous traitre ! 
je vous deteste ! ' The Hofdame von Mosting, and 
a lady of the bedchamber, accompanied Caroline 
Mathilde in the carrriage, and opposite to the Queen 
sat Major von Castenskjold. Surrounded by thirty 
dragoons, the carriage moved off, and bore the Queen 
from the palace which she was never to see again. 

After a drive of about four hours, she reached Kron- 
enburg. Alighting in the courtyard, she exclaimed, 
' God ! I am lost for ever ! The King has given me up ! ' 
Presently she said, ' Away, away from here ! For me 
there can be no peace more ! ' Then she burst into 
tears, and clasped the little child to her bosom. Two 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 99 

days elapsed before the unhappy Queen would con- 
sent to go to bed or to take nourishment. And so 
we leave her, for the present, imprisoned in the 
Kronenburg. 

The minor adherents of Struensee were easily 
arrested by the inferior officers of the new r Govern- 
ment. The success of the plot was complete. 
Denmark was saved from anarchy and ruin ; and the 
capital w r as in an ecstasy of joy. 

On the following morning the excited people 
assembled in masses before the palace, and the King 
came out to them, and shouted with them, • Hurrah ! ' 
He drove through Copenhagen in a State carriage, 
and the people took out the horses and themselves 
drew the coach. Prince Friedrich rode with him, and 
was well received. The enthusiasm of the people 
was real and was great. ( Man feuerte mit Gew T ehren 
Freudenschiisse ab, warf Raketen in die Luft, sang und 
schrie und geberdete sich vor Freude wie betrunken.' 

The whole country was in a ferment of exultation 
at the fall of the godless cabal which had for so long 
weighed upon the land. The whole literature of 
Denmark triumphed in the fall of Struensee ; nor 
was the Queen spared. All the pulpits of the 
capital thanked Heaven for the downfall of those 
who had injured and disgraced the Fatherland. The 
mob wrecked the house of the father of Esther Gabel 
because she had been the mistress of Struensee ; and 
then, actuated by a singular inspiration of revenge, 



lOO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

they pulled down the brothels. The city was illum- 
inated. The King, the Queen-Mother, and Prince 
Friedrich appeared in the royal box in the Hoftheater y 
and were received with enthusiasm, the audience 
shouting, ' Long live King Christian VII. ! ' 

Graf zu Rantzau-Ascheberg, von Eichstedt, von 
Koller, Beringskjold, received honours and rewards. 
Gulclberg alone refused all recompense. This sturdy 
Dane had done what he did for the sake of the 
Fatherland and the common weal ; and, as he had 
acted from no base motive, he despised all reward. 

Struensee, meanwhile, as cowardly in adversity as- 
he had been presumptuous in prosperity, fell into a 
condition of abject despondency. For some time he 
refused food, and then he attempted suicide. He tried 
to dash out his brains against the w r alls of the prison ; 
and he sought to put an end to his life by swallow- 
ing some horn buttons. Brandt displayed an equable 
and cheerful fortitude. The echoes of the popular 
rapture at his fall penetrated into the dungeon of 
Struensee. 

Juliane Marie and her son were well liked by a 
grateful press and people. ( Her fame/ it was said, 
' would outshine that of Semiramis.' 

It was felt in Denmark that the country which 

could allow the despotism of a Struensee must be 

held in contempt by other nations ; and there was 

strong national pride in throwing off such a yoke. 

The next step to be taken was to bring to trial the 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. IOI 

Queen, Struensee, and Brandt ; and commissions 
were appointed for this purpose. 

The men chosen for this purpose were einsichtsvolle 
und rechtschaffene Beamte — officials of insight and of 
character. Before the trials there were interrogatories 
.addressed to the prisoners. Struensee was too cowed 
to think clearly, too ignoble to feel rightly, and he hoped 
probably to save his worthless life by connecting him- 
self with Her Majesty. He had no chivalry towards the 
Queen ; no honour which could try to shield the fame 
■of the woman whom had been led by his arts into sin. 

He confessed with tears ein unerlaubtes VerJialtniss 
between the Queen and himself ; and, under a second 
examination, he gave ample details. He signed a pro- 
tocol which recorded a full confession of adultery. 

Counsel were assigned to the accused, and both 
advocates and judges were released from their oaths 
as subjects, in order that they might freely discharge 
their duties. Kammeradvocat Bang represented the 
King, and the Queen was defended by the Hoch- 
stengerichtsadvokat Uldall. Generalfiskal Wiwet 
conducted the prosecution against Struensee and 
Brandt, who were defended respectively by Uldall 
and by Bang. It may fairly be said that the counsel 
for the accused discharged their duties to their clients 
with, at least, average advocate ability. 

The counsel for the prosecution of the Queen had 
an easy task. Her Majesty had admitted to the 
Commissioners who interrogated her that she had 



102 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

broken her marriage-vow. The confession of Struen- 
see himself was full and was explicit ; and his state- 
ment of details accorded fully with the evidence of 
the Queen's ladies-in-attendance and of her female 
servants. These ladies had remonstrated with Her 
Majesty about her conduct with Struensee. For a 
short time his nightly visits ceased, but were soon re- 
sumed with defiant frequency. To the Kammerfraulein 
von Eyben the Queen had admitted that ' the thing 
was unfortunately true ;' and had said that there was 
nothing wrong in a wife being unfaithful to a husband 
who was old, or who had been forced upon her. The 
Queen added that she knew what reports were circu- 
lated, but that she should not alter her course on that 
account. The evidence of the ladies and of the female 
domestics was very full and conclusive. The advocate 
prayed for a dissolution of the royal marriage, on the 
ground of adultery, with a divorce which would set 
the King free to marry again. All punishment rested 
with His Majesty. 

The sentence of the High Court was, that the 
divorce, as prayed for by the King's advocate, be 
fully granted ; and this decision was communicated 
to the ex-Queen. 

Meanwhile, Sir Ex>bert Keith was not idle. He 
sent off a courier to George III., and protested ener- 
getically against any sentence of death, or of per- 
petual imprisonment in Denmark. George III. 
responded by sending to the ambassador the Order 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. IO3 

of the Bath, and by threatening that, if the Queen's 
life were endangered, an English fleet should sail at 
once (it was in readiness) to bombard Copenhagen. 
With the matter of the divorce, or with the decision 
of the Court of Law, George III. would not in any 
way interfere. Twelve days after the news of the 
divorce reached London, the mother of Caroline 
Mathilde, the Princess of Wales, died, her end has- 
tened by the afflicting intelligence of such a decision 
against her daughter. 

It was on. March 8, 1772, that the Royal Commis- 
sion presented itself at Kronenburg to examine 
Caroline Mathilde. They began by informing her 
of the confession of Struensee. Flushed with indig- 
nation, the unfortunate woman exclaimed that it was 
impossible that Struensee could have compromised 
her in such a manner. For answer they placed in 
her hands the protocol which Struensee had signed. 
When she saw the well-known signature at the foot 
of such a damning statement, she was seized with 
horror and with terror. Shack-Rathlau remarked : — 
' Si l'aveu de M. Struensee n'est point vrai, Madame 
la Reine, alors il n'y a pas de mort assez cruelle 
pour ce monstre qui a encore ose vous compromettre 
a ce point/ 

The struggle in the poor Queen's breast must have 
been terrible. Changing from white to red, she 
thought long, and then asked, with a true woman's 
consideration, even in such an hour, for a base and 



104 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

perfidious lover: — ' Mais si j'avouais les mots de 
Struensee, pourrais-je sauver sa vie par-la ? ! Shack- 
Rathlau answered : — ' Surement, Madame, cela 
pourrait adoucir son sort de toute maniere/ He 
then presented to the Queen a paper which contained 
an admission of the truth of Struensee's confession. 
' Eh bien, je signerai ! ' cried the Queen, and, taking 
a pen, she signed the document which admitted her 
guilt and blasted her reputation. So soon as her 
signature was attached, she realised the consequences 
of her admission, and, in a paroxysm of despair, the 
unhappy Queen sank back fainting on the sofa. 
The Commission returned to Copenhagen with the 
two fatal confessions duly signed and witnessed. 

The indictment against Struensee was a terrible im- 
peachment. All the forms in which he had com- 
mitted high treason were set forth at length. Wiwet 
terms Struensee die allerdummdreisteste Person die 
man sich imaginiren kann ; and a patriotic indignation 
against the unworthy man who had degraded Queen 
and country glows through the advocate's address. 
The crimes and offences of Struensee are in essence 
known to us. Suffice it to say, that the prosecuting 
counsel summed them up in nine heads, each one of 
which covered a charge of high treason. 

Through the mouth of his advocate, Struensee 
repeats a full admission of his guilty relations with 
the Queen, expresses the deepest contrition, and prays 
the King to forgive his offence. He also pleads that 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 105 

the influence of the Queen was the only support upon 
which he could rely. Generally, he asserts purity of 
motive in all that he did. 

Brandt's case came next. He was charged with 
being the assistant and accomplice of Struensee in all 
the Minister's misdeeds ; and that Brandt knew fully 
the footing on which Struensee stood with the Queen. 
Brandt was further accused of having subjected His 
Majesty's royal person to indignities and even to 
violence. 

On April 27, 1772. sentence* was pronounced and 
was signed by the King. Both culprits had been 
declared guilty of the highest kind, known to the law, 
of crimen Iczsce Majestatis ; and the sentences on both 
ran — that they should be degraded from all rank and 
•office ; their coats of arms broken by the hangman ; 
that their right hands, and then their heads, should be 
struck off; the bodies quartered and extended upon 
the wheel ; and the heads and hands exposed upon 
poles. 

So much grace was extended to them that they 
were not to be broken alive upon the wheel. Both 
criminals appealed to the mercy of the King ; and 
Owe Guldberg tried passionately to save the lives of 
both, but specially of Brandt, who was the lesser 
criminal, and to whom mercy might have been ex- 
tended. Guldberg's humane efforts remained, how- 
ever, without result. 

After signing the sentences, the King went to the 



106 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

opera ; and on April 26th a masquerade was given in 
the castle. 

On the morning of April 28, 1772, the two ex- 
Ministers, Struensee and Brandt, were executed in 
pursuance of their sentences. While in prison, both 
had become converts to religion. Dr Miinter had 
attended Struensee, and accompanied him to the 
scaffold ; Probst Hee was Brandt's chaplain. At 
8.30 A.M., the fatal procession started from the citadeL 
The two State criminals rode in carriages, that which 
contained Brandt going first. Both were gaily dressed 
in Court costumes, and wore fur coats. The huge 
scaffold, eighteen feet in height, had been erected in a 
field used as a military exercise ground, to the east of 
the city. The scaffold was surrounded by soldiers,, 
and the immense mob of people that gathered to see 
the Ministers die was kept at some distance from the 
scaffold itself. The carriages stopped at length, and 
Brandt descended. The carriage which contained 
Struensee was humanely so turned that the occupants 
could not see the scaffold. Brandt was serenely 
brave. Without bravado he was thoroughly calm 
and composed. 

When he had reached the high platform, his sen- 
tence was read out, and then the executioner saying, 
i Dies geschieht nicht umsonst, sondern nach Ver- 
dienst; ' ' This is not done without cause, but has been 
deserved/ broke and defaced the Count's coat of 
arms. He demanded his profession of faith, and 



■ COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 107 

asked if Brandt repented of his treason. The Count 
professed regret, and asked pardon of the King and 
the country. He declared his lively faith in the blood 
of Jesus Christ ; and the pastor replied, 'Be of good 
cheer, for thy sins are forgiven thee.' 

The headsman approached. Brandt himself, his 
courage remaining unshaken, took off his coat and 
waistcoat. He laid his neck upon one block, and 
extended his right hand upon another. A single 
blow upon each, and head and hand were severed 
from the body. 

Struensee's turn came next. In that dread hour his 
courage forsook him, and it was with difficulty that 
he ascended the steps of the scaffold. Again the 
sentence was read out, and again, with the words, 
'Dies geschieht nicht umsonst, sondern nach Ver- 
dienst,' a coat of arms was broken and defaced. His 
confession of faith and forgiveness of enemies were 
satisfactory to Miinter. 

Here the unhappy man's forces failed him ; he 
could not remove his own clothes, and this had to be 
done by the hangman's assistants. He tottered a 
few steps towards the block, but could not reach it 
or without assistance assume the necessary position. 
As the right hand was struck off, the w r hole body of 
the condemned was seized with strong convulsions. 
The first blow upon the neck was a failure. 
Struensee sprang up to his full height, and the assist- 
ants had to use force to replace him on the block. 



108 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

A second blow was not sufficient, and it required a 
third stroke to sever the head from the body. 

The bodies were then quartered and duly exposed 
and the heads and hands were carried to the Raben- 
stein, there to be set upon poles. And so the sen- 
tences were fulfilled. 

The other members of the Struensee faction were 
treated with remarkable mildness. The Council of 
State (which had been recalled to existence by 
Juliane Marie and Prince Friedrich), simply ordered 
these persons to leave the capital. In some cases 
pensions were allowed when offices had been con- 
fiscated. Struensee's brother, the Finance Minister, 
was allowed to leave the country after taking an 
oath not to divulge any State secrets that he might 
have learned in the Danish service. 

It was at first proposed to immure Caroline 
Mathilde in Aalborg in Jutland ; but the energetic 
Keith obtained as a concession — a concession which 
the Government was probably not very unwilling to 
grant — that the ex-Queen should be given up to 
her brother, George III. 

It was impossible to have Caroline Mathilde at the 
Court of Queen Charlotte, or even at the Court of 
Hanover; and George III. determined to assign to 
his younger sister his castle at Celle, as a place of 
honourable captivity. Celle had been the residence 
of the Dukes of Luneburg, and was still a fortified 
castle with moat and walls. 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 109 

The ex-Queen had an allowance of 30,000 thalers 
a year, with a sufficient household, and every com- 
fort. Of course she was separated from her children ; 
but she must have been of an elastic temperament, 
as she soon had companies of comedians in the castle, 
and began to enjoy herself. 

Her elder sister, the Erbprinzessin Auguste von 
Braunschweig - Wolfenbiittel, exercised a kind of 
control over Celle and its royal inmate, and was 
regarded by Caroline Mathilde as a spy. Auguste 
would seem to have been convinced of her sister's 
guilt. 

Presently the ex-Queen began to intrigue, taking 
care to keep the thing a secret from her sister 
Auguste. Some adherents proposed to make her 
Regent in Denmark, until her son should attain 
his majority. Caroline Mathilde listened gladly, 
but she could do nothing without George III., and 
Sir N. Wraxall became the go-between. He made 
several journeys between Celle and London. George 
III. seems to have given a provisional assent, ex- 
pressing readiness to recognise the step if it should 
succeed, but declining to take himself any active 
part in it. The King of England stipulated that 
no revenge should be used against Juliane Marie 
and Friedrich. How r ever a few partisans might 
flatter her, it seems unlikely that Denmark would, 
have received as Regent a Queen, divorced, con- 
victed of adultery, and once leagued with the hated 



IIO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Struensee. However, all such projects came to an 
untimely end, by the death, May i, 1775, at Celle, 
of Caroline Mathilde. She had reached the age of 
twenty-three years and nine months. 

The cause of death was scarlet fever. A portrait 
of Caroline Mathilde is now lying before me. She 
has not the receding forehead of George III., but 
is otherwise a very handsome feminine likeness of 
her royal brother. The figure inclines to a voluptu- 
ous embonpoint; the lips are full and pouting; the 
eyes languishing and large. The nose is rather 
thickly modelled ; the face expresses gaiety, good 
humour, obstinacy, sensuality. She must have been 
vivacious and pleasure-loving ; passionate and light. 
Altogether a woman of an attractive sexual presence ; 
and essentially a woman of the morals and manners 
of her place and time. Some of the light conversa- 
tion recorded by her ladies-in-waiting suggests rather 
the placid laxity of Emilia than the steadfast purity 
of Desdemona. 

Juliane Marie has been violently attacked by the 
defenders of Caroline Mathilde, but I cannot find 
that the Queen-Mother deserved the opprobrium 
with which she has been assailed. She was no doubt 
fond of power, and capable of intrigue. Her own 
son was only about three years younger than Chris- 
tian VII. ; and during the childhood and early youth 
of the latter, she acquired a love of rule. During 
the sway of Struensee she was rudely pushed on one 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. ■ III 



side. Speaking to Dr Munter about Struensee, she 
said, — ' I am truly sorry for the unfortunate man. 
I have examined myself to ascertain whether I have 
acted out of personal enmity ; but my conscience 
acquits me of the charge.' A Danish Queen might 
well feel a righteous indignation against such an 
unprincipled and insolent upstart ; nor could Juliane 
Marie have regarded with indifference Struensee's 
-disgraceful relations with Caroline Mathilde. When, 
after the fall of the lackey-Minister, the Queen- 
Mother returned to power, she at once restored the 
old Council of State. She was kind to the two 
children of Caroline Mathilde, and resisted the desire 
of the Council to treat the little girl as if the child 
were not legitimate. When Friedrich VI. had 
arrived at a proper age (his demented father being 
still alive) she made no difficulty in resigning the 
Regency to him, and retired with her son into private 
life ; abdicating, practically, a throne without any 
attempt to retain her splendid position. The Queen- 
Mother must have been a woman of ability and of 
some force of character. 

Germans iove Germans, but do not love Danes. 
Struensee was a German, and has, even yet, 
German admirers. Jenssen-Tusch admires him ; 
and as a necessary consequence defends Caroline 
Mathilde. 

Anne Boleyn has doubtful defenders ; Katharine 
Howard has hardly any : but Mary Queen of Scots 



112 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

has still champions of her chastity ; and has not a 
book been written to prove the platonic character of 
Frau von Stein's relations to Goethe ? Truly, histori- 
cal sentimentalism is still an active power. 

It is one thing to urge for Caroline Mathilde all the 
excuses which justice and mercy can fairly plead ; 
but it is another thing to deny facts. There is excuse 
for the fair Queen's sin ; but sin there was. Her 
husband could only inspire in her breast loathing r 
contempt, anger. The times were dissolute, and 
temptation was at hand ; but those who feel impelled 
to pity frailty take a wholly wrong line of argument 
when they ignore or deny facts. 

Friedrich VI. applied -to George III. for an English 
princess to wife, but was sternly refused. He married 
his cousin, the daughter of the Landgraf Karl von 
Hessen, and of Louise, the youngest sister of Christian 
VII. The refusal of the English Monarch embittered 
the King of Denmark, and threw that country into 
the arms of Napoleon. Hence the bombardment of 
Copenhagen, and its capitulation to Nelson in i8oi r 
and the capture of the Danish fleet in 1807 by 
Gambier. 

Of Christian VII., when in London, Horace Wal- 
pole writes : — 

1 He is as diminutive as if he came out of a kernel in the 
fairy tales — he is not ill made, nor weakly made, though so 
small ; and though his face is pale and delicate, it is not at all 

ugly Well, then, this great king is a very little one. He 

has the sublime strut of his grandfather (or a cock-sparrow) r 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. II3 

and the divine white eyes of all his family on the mother's side. 
.... His Court is extremely well ordered, for they bow as low 
to him at every word as if his name were Sultan Amurath. . . . 
The very citizens of both sexes, who resorted daily to his apart- 
ments at St James' to see him dine in public with his favourites, 
mistook him more than once for a young girl dressed in man's 
clothes, whose conversation and deportment commanded neither 
respect nor attention. His confidants were of the same stamp.' 

Sir Robert Murray Keith records that Christian 
VII. was, at the age of seventeen, of a figure light 
and compact, under middle height, but well propor- 
tioned. His features, if not handsome, were regular ; 
he had a good forehead and aquiline nose, a hand- 
some mouth and fine set of teeth. He w r as fair, with 
blue eyes and very light hair. Altogether a slight, 
but not unattractive figure. 

Headstrong and shallow, Struensee had but little 
of the wisdom of the statesman, or of the patience 
of the reformer. Reform, in his eyes, was to be a 
popular drama in which he was to play a showy 
part. He was unable to estimate the complexities 
of correlated existing institutions, or to comprehend 
the forces arrayed against him. Nor was Struensee 

' A moral child without the craft to rule.' 

He relied upon craft, when violence was dangerous, 
and he should have commenced his career as a 
moralist by reforming himself. For a time his 
success, not as a reformer, but as a courtier, w r as 
supreme ; but that success was based upon the favour 
of a morbid Monarch and a wanton Queen. The 

H 



114 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

essence of Struensee's reform meant, in reality, place, 
power, pleasure, for Struensee himself. He had not 
the single eye. There was, no doubt, much that was 
rotten in the state of. Denmark ; but a man vain, 
restless, personally ambitious, is naturally more 
attracted by gain than revolted by evil. He cannot 
serve liberty who cannot rule himself; and Struensee, 
without self-restraint or modesty, was not master of 
his own passions, or capable of serving humanity. 
He was neither patient to understand, or wise to 
improve ; but he took a masterful delight in the 
exercise of absolute power, and joyed in subjugating 
the wills of others to his own. 

Struensee had, unquestionably, a power in his 
personality. He was, when he chose to be so, sym- 
pathetic in a high degree ; he was fluent, plausible ; 
supple in intrigue, and had the magic of fervent will 
and strong determination. It would be unfair to 
assume that he had not some tendencv — even if 
that tendency were a sham, or sentimental one — to 
reform abuses ; and he ardently desired popularity 
and applause. But he was as selfish as showy, as 
greedy as insincere. A great man, with great plans, 
must be greater even than his plans. Struensee, 
whose glaring path was darkened by self-seeking and 
self-love, was not capable of following out abstract 
ideas in purity of aim. Unlike noble, if deeply erring 
Launcelot, Struensee zvas the sleeker for 

1 The great and guilty love he bare the Queen ; 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. 1 1 5 

though his love for her, guilty certainly, was doubtful 
in its greatness. His plans for reform, his schemes 
for popularity, all failed ; but he remained the despot 
of a nation, the dictator of a King, the lover of a 
Queen — and became, at last, the victim of a heads- 
man. His career was successful so long only as it 
was supported by the imbecility of a King, by the 
passion of a Queen. With a power based upon 
hallucination and adultery, Struensee, as a reformer, 
or would-be great man, remains a solecism incarnate. 
An upstart and a parvenu, Struensee naturally 
found the Danish nobility in strong opposition to 
him and to his plans. He separated the nobility from 
the throne ; he degraded the order, and exasperated 
its members. Struensee's hatred of aristocracy was 
not an abstract feeling ; for he desired for himself 
titles, riches, position, and power. It was the feeling 
of a coarse plebeian, filled with envious hatred of a 
class which combined' the heritage of command* with 
fine manners and with long traditions. It was a joy 
to him to injure and to humiliate such a body. In 
order to counterpoise the nobles, he favoured the 
bourgeoisie; but even towards this class he was 
arrogant and capricious, and from it he won but 
little gratitude. His attempts to introduce his ill- 
judged reforms among the sailors led to the revolt at 
Hirschholm ; his efforts to remodel the army resulted 
in disaffection and disgust. The nobles and the 
nation — every one, indeed, except the monarch — ■ 



Il6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

knew of his relations to the Queen ; and she became 
involved in the hatred with which the foreign 
adventurer was regarded in Denmark. Struensee 
was bent upon outraging the Danish nationality, and 
he filled all high offices with creatures of his own, 
imported from Germany. He also displaced the 
Danish, in favour of the German tongue. Danish he 
never learned. For a time his position must have 
been intoxicating in its splendour and success. He 
could oppress foes, and could exalt friends. His will 
was law ; and his pleasure, government. He was 
absolute, and the throne itself was only his first subject. 
The King was subject to the Queen, and she was 
slave to Struensee. He was long held up on his 
dazzling eminence by the fair small hand of a devoted 
and infatuated woman ; and he repaid her boundless 
devotion by dragging the Queen down with him in 
his fall, and by involving her in the tragedy of her 
divorce, and of his own death by the headsman's 
axe. 

But, during the seeming security of Struensee's day 
of unlimited power, there was maturing, silently, a 
stealthy and a deadly revolt against him, his rule, and 
his life. Everything depended at last upon the King. 
When Christian should realise Struensee's relation to 
the Queen, all would be lost — for both the lovers ; but 
who, during a long period, who should dare to tell the 
truth to the King ? Blind, easy, sickly as he was, 
Christian was yet known to be sensitive on the point 



COUNT STRUENSEE, ETC. \\J 

of his conjugal honour ; and the relation of the truth 
became the signal for an inexorable revenge. 

Heinrich Laube has based a tragedy upon the sub- 
ject ; and the dramatist has chosen well. The story 
itself, which we have just essayed to tell — with all its 
dramatic incidents, with its contrasts of character, 
with its baseness, its weakness and its sorrow, with 
that full revolution of Fortune's wheel which leads to 
such a terrible catastrophe — is, indeed, a striking 
drama of history. A powerful and a most moving 
tragedy is contained in the sad, the striking story of 
STRUENSEE. 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF 
BOHEMIA, 

TO LIZABETH STUART, some time Queen of 
Bohemia, and still titular Queen of Hearts ; 
daughter of James I. and Anne of Denmark ; grand- 
daughter of Mary Queen of Scots, fourth in descent 
from Margaret Tudor ; sister of Prince Henry and 
of Charles I. ; wife of the Winter-Konig ; mother of 
the Princes Rupert and Maurice, and of the Elec- 
tress Sophia ; friend of Lord Craven — is the Princess 
who took the blood royal of England and of Scotland 
to Germany, where it became blended with that of 
the Guelphs ; the result being that Elizabeth's 
descendants, Stuarts on the spindle side, succeeded 
to the throne of England, after the last Stuart King 
had been deprived of the Crown, and after his two 
daughters had died without leaving issue. 

A direct descendant of this mixed strain of royal 
blood now wears the Crown of Britain. 'The 
sovereign qualification was restored to the realm (at 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. I 19 

the accession of the House of Hanover) in its highest 
purity through the descendants of the Guelphs, 
passing back through the House of Este to connect 
themselves with some of the illustrious Roman 
Gentes. The new dynasty was, indeed, by centuries 
older in history than the Plantagenets.' — (Burton.) 
Elizabeth Stuart was born in Falkland Palace, 19th 
August 1596; she died, 13th February 1662, in 
Leicester House, London. 

Between birth and death, this descendant and 
ancestress of kings lived through many adventures, 
saw many men of mark in many foreign lands, 
experienced bitter sorrows, and passed through a 
strange life of royal romance. Princess, Electress, 
Queen, fugitive, and refugee, her career knew pomp 
and pleasure, penury and pain. After stormy alter- 
nations of rule and of reverse, the (titular) ex-Queen 
of Bohemia returned from the Continent to England 
to die there, generally neglected and half unknown. 
The years which elapsed between the period at 
which she quitted England as Electress Palatine and 
returned to it a beauty-waning and distressed widow, 
discrowned and forlorn, embraced the terrible epoch 
of the Thirty Years' War ; and Elizabeth's vivid 
memory was filled with vital images of the long 
agony of that most cruel civil and religious struggle. 
She had actually and intimately known the persons, 
intrigues, interests, of the great war ; had seen many 
of the heroes, adventurers, tyrants, of that woeful 



120 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

time ; had spoken with Gustavus Adolphus, Maurice 
of Nassau, Mansfeld, Christian of Brunswick, and 
many other notabilities of that distinctive epoch of 
history; had shared the somewhat heavy splen- 
dours of the German Courts of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and had experienced the substantial comfort 
of the hospitable States-General in the great days 
of Holland. Around her image stand the figures, 
behind her glooms the sombre background of that 
dire convulsion. The years over which her active 
life extended were of singular importance alike to the 
politics and to the religion of all Europe. A witness 
of, and an actress in, that supreme struggle between 
faiths and dynasties, Elizabeth lived in the very 
midst of the horror, the romance, the woe of that 
daemonic strain and anguish of thirty years' dura- 
tion. She saw the long process of that exhaus- 
tion of war-worn nations which dictated the peace of 
Westphalia : her own brother, after the civil wars of 
England, perished on the scaffold at Whitehall : she 
lived through the time of the Protectorate, and she 
witnessed the restoration of the royal line in Eng- 
land. Her life, and the times through which she 
lived, are surely subjects of surpassing interest for an 
historical essay. Of the sources of information about 
the Thirty Years' War, it may well be said that their 
name is legion. The number of German authorities, 
the plethora of continental records are, in truth, 
almost bewildering ; but the writer about that com- 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 121 

plex time may well bear in mind Professor Masson's 
modest and pregnant saying, ' I can never pass a 
sheet of the historical kind for the press without a 
^dread, lest from inadvertance, or from sheer ignor- 
ance, some error, some blunder even, may have 
escaped me.' 

The girlhood of Elizabeth, after her father's ac- 
cession to the throne (1603), was passed chiefly at 
Combe Abbey, under the wise guardianship of Sir 
John, afterwards Lord Harrington, and of his wife. 
There she played, and studied, and became a mighty 
huntress. The influences which surrounded her 
youth were noble, kindly, natural. The Gunpowder 
Plot conspirators designed to seize her person, and to 
proclaim her Queen after the murder of her father. 
They hoped to mould her tender youth to the religion 
■of the Romish Church, and to obtain from such a 
•sovereign Catholic supremacy in England. During 
the danger arising from the plot, the young Princess 
was removed, temporarily, from Combe Abbey to 
•Coventry ; but after the execution of the conspirators, 
she returned to the beloved home of her childhood. 
The great delight of her years of girlhood consisted 
in the tender affection which subsisted between 
Elizabeth and her noble brother, the young Prince 
Henry ; a Prince of rare promise, ' the expectancy 
and rose of the fair State/ who evinced in his early 
years a true sympathy with all that was noblest in 
English life and thought. Henry, had he lived, 



122 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

would probably have been, like the last great Tudor 
monarch, an England-loving ruler, ' more English 
than the English themselves,' and in intimate and 
instinctive union with the essence of the national 
life. Both Henry and Elizabeth were convinced and 
ardent Protestants. Between the royal children and 
their parents there was not — there could not be — 
much intimacy or close sympathy. Anne of Den- 
mark was gay, pleasure-loving, cheerful, frivolous, 
James, fittest, by nature, to squabble with another 
mind of like calibre with his own about the trivialities 
of theology, was a monarch besotted with his own 
fatuous conception of the divine right of kings ; and 
was unstable, pedantic, undignified, and unvirile. 
That he had a coward's cruelty, the fates of Arabella 
Stuart and of Sir Walter Raleigh amply prove. Un- 
gainly in person, he was yet more unlovely in 
mind. Entering upon the noble inheritance of a reign 
which succeeded to that of Elizabeth, he alienated 
the nation from his dynasty, he prepared the great 
rebellion, he lowered England in the councils of 
Europe ; and, while a most exasperating tyrant to 
people and to Parliament, he remained long the abject 
slave of Spain and of unworthy favourites. The best 
excuse, perhaps, for the pusillanimous King of Eng- 
land, who dared not look upon a drawn sword, con- 
sists in the fatal event which occurred while he was 
yet in his mother's womb. James and his daughter 
never came very near together ; James and his son 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. I 23 

Henry drifted even farther and farther apart. It was 
inevitable that it should be so. 

As the years rolled on, the question of the marri- 
ages of such a hopeful Prince and Princess began 
to press. ' I would rather espouse a Protestant Count 
than a Catholic Emperor,' said Elizabeth. In this, as 
in other things, she took her tone from her knightly 
Prince brother, who opposed heartily a scheme for 
marrying him to the Infanta Anna of Spain, sister to 
that Infanta Maria whom his brother Charles after- 
wards pursued in Madrid with bootless courtship. 
Henry, indeed, proposed to accompany his sister to 
Germany in order there to be able to remain purely 
Protestant, and to select and marry some Protestant 
Princess. 

At the suggestion of Maurice of Nassau, a suitor 
for the hand of Elizabeth presented himself in the 
person of Frederick, Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, and son 
of the Kurfurst, or Elector, of the Palatinate, Frederick 
IV. Frederick IV., who was born in 1574, and 
married, 1593, Luise Juliane, daughter of William the 
Silent, a noble daughter of a noble father, was 
the most considerable Protestant Prince of Germany. 
His territory did not equal in importance that of 
Saxony, but the talents, the character, and the zeal 
of Frederick IV. soon placed him at the head of 
Protestant Germany. He took a leading part in 
founding the famous Protestant Union in 1608 ; and 
was, indeed, the Chief of the Union, which included 



124 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

among its members the Duke of Wurtemberg, the 
Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel, and the Markgrafs of 
Anspach and of Baden Durlach. Frederick IV. died 
1 8th September 1610. The Protestant Union called 
into being the Catholic Liga, founded 10th of July 
1609. The Union had many heads ; the Liga only 
one ; but that one was Maximilian of Bavaria, while 
its general was Tilly. Maximilian was unscrupulous, 
eager, crafty, energetic. A pupil of the Jesuits, and 
a bigoted Catholic, Maximilian knew well what he 
wanted, and he hesitated at no means that would 
serve his ends. He had the advantage, to a partisan, 
of a clear will/ a ruthless cruelty, and a cunning 
audacity. 

The youth of Frederick V. was passed chiefly at 
Sedan, under the guidance of the Duke of Bouillon, 
though his guardian was the Herzog Johann von 
Zweibriicken, to whom Frederick IV. left the Govern- 
ment of the Palatinate while Frederick V. should 
remain a minor. 

At Sedan the young Kurfiirst was in a court, but 
never in a camp. _ He learned politics, and not war ; 
he was taught accomplishments, but not warfare ; he 
acquired arts without learning arms. His education 
was political, and was peaceful. The son of the 
Chief of the Union, he remained ignorant of the art 
of war. Such knowledge as he attained to in the use 
of arms, fitted him rather for the holiday tilt-yard 
than for the terrors of the battlefield. He was but 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 25 

a poor soldier, and he was no general. For the needs 
of his day, and of his own future life, he was but 
imperfectly trained. He was a cavalier, but not a 
warrior. Frederick was graceful, and was gentle ; 
courteous, tender, and true. He was capable of a 
constant and noble love. His person was fine,, 
though not stalwart ; he shone more at the ball than 
in the school of arms. His father had passed from 
Lutheranism to Calvinism, and the young Kurpfalz 
was a convinced and zealous Calvinist. As a suitor 
for the hand of Elizabeth Stuart, he was acceptable 
to James, and was highly popular with the English 
nation, which ardently desired a Protestant Prince as 
a husband for the daughter of the throne. 

The match was distasteful to the Catholic party,, 
and to the gay and sprightly Anne of Denmark. 
Her ambition desired a king as the husband of her 
daughter, and Anne's sneer at * Goody Palsgrave ' 
damped the present joy, and influenced the future 
career of Elizabeth, who inherited much of her 
mother's light and frivolous temperament. 

The race of the renowned Otto of Wittelsbach 
split itself into two branches — the Bavarian and the 
Palatine. The original stock obtained the Duchy of 
Bavaria, in 11 80, from the Emperor Frederick I.; 
and, afterwards, from Frederick II., the Palatinate of 
the Rhine. The treaty of Pavia, in 1329, divided 
the two countries under two reigning houses springing 
from the parent root, and in the early years of the 



126 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

seventeenth century, Bavaria was ruled by the strong 
and wily Maximilian (born 17th of April 1573), while 
his cousin, the weak and gentle Frederick V., in- 
herited the Government of the Palatinate. 

Prince Henry, the gallant-springing young Stuart, 
died November 6, 161 2; but, amid the actual 
mourning for her well-loved brother, Elizabeth 
married Frederick on the 14th of February 161 3. 
The nuptials were celebrated with great rejoicings 
and with extraordinary pomp and expense. The 
honeymoon over, the married lovers sailed from 
Margate to Flushing, where they were received by 
Maurice, and whence they passed, in a sort of 
triumphal procession, to Heidelberg — Elizabeth's 
new home. 

Born in the same year, 1596, Frederick and 
Elizabeth were alike seventeen years of age at the 
date of their marriage. Frederick was. still a minor 
when they reached Heidelberg ; nor did he assume 
the reins of Government until the next year, 1614; 
but his territory had been well administered by his 
mother. and his guardian. In 1614, Elizabeth's first 
child, Heinrich Friedrich, was born in the Palace of 
Heidelberg. 

The early time of their marriage was one of 
singular happiness ; of a happiness so great that it 
contrasts painfully with the sorrows of the coming 
years. Elizabeth exercised an unlimited empire over 
an uxorious young husband, who found his chief 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. \2J 

delight in her affection. She had all the things for 
which she vitally cared — pomp, pleasure, dominion, 
and hunting ; though the crumpled rose-leaf in her 
lot was, perhaps, the rankle of her mother's sneer at 
4 Goody Palsgrave.' The years of peace and of 
pleasure in Heidelberg were but few. Frederick and 
liis wife could not remain contented with their own 
Palatinate. Light and trivial natures both, they were 
not too light or too trivial to remain untouched by 
ambition during the intoxication and the ferment of 
their dav of strain and storm : 

7 Tis dangerous when the lesser nature comes 
Between the fell pass and incensed points 
Of mighty opposites. 

To his own utter undoing, and to the great injury of 
the Protestant cause, Frederick plunged into those 
troubled waters in order to encircle the round hat of 
an Elector with a golden crown. The primary cause 
of the Thirty Years' War in Germany was the 
determination of the Austro- Spanish Monarchies, 
aided by the Catholic Princes — and notably by 
Bavaria — to establish the ecclesiastical dominion of 
the Pope in all Germany, in Holland, and afterwards, 
if possible, in the northern kingdoms of Scandinavia, 
and in all the other ' Heretic States ' of Europe. The 
Treaty of Augsburg (1555) was to be torn up, and the 
Reformation suppressed by force as well as fraud. 
The House of Hapsburg, as vassal of the Pope, was 
to rule and reign throughout the land of Luther. 



128 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Religion furnished the impulse ; political ambition 
the secondary cause; while bigotry lent ferocity ta 
the conduct of the merciless and devastating struggle. 

The Austrian branch of Hapsburg sought absolute 
imperial power and universal monarchy. The war 
was a battlefield for princes and for captains who- 
desired either to acquire or to defend territories and 
inheritances. It was an arena for the plots of 
schemers and for the ambition of heroes. It fostered 
the trade of mercenary soldier, and developed to- 
gigantic dimensions the place, the profit, and the 
pride of the able warrior of fortune. Through valour, 
cruelty, treachery, it marched over a country rendered 
wretched, desolate, and waste. By the process of 
utter exhaustion, it left the chief combatants in the 
situation, in which, as regards principles, if not 
position, they were at the treaty of Augsburg in 1.555. 
It confirmed a religious toleration which it ought 
never to have disturbed. It returned practically to 
the point from which it started. In result it was a 
triumph for Protestantism and for religious liberty ; 
its issue repelled the fierce onslaught of Catholicism ; 
but the war was, on the part of those who provoked 
it, a wicked war : and such success as was attained 
was purchased by oceans of blood and by years of 
misery. 

The preliminary indications of the long war were 
the violent seizure by Maximilian of Bavaria of Do- 
nauworth, and the intricate tangle of the question of 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 29 

the inheritance of the Duchies of Cleve and Jiilich. 
The weakness of Protestantism in Germany was 
caused in part by the fatal split between Lutheran 
and Calvinist, and by the contemptible character of 
■the leading Protestant Princes — of such men as 
Johann Georg, of Saxony, and Georg Wilhelm, tenth 
Elector of Brandenburg. Both Electors honoured 
and dreaded the Emperor more than they loved their 
religion ; neither would peril aught for that cause. 
Carlyle says, ' In fact, had there been no better Pro- 
testantism than that of Germany, all was over with 
Protestantism. . . . Over seas there dwelt and 
reigned a certain King in Sweden ; there farmed 
and walked musing by the shores of the Ouse, in 
Huntingdonshire, a certain man ; there was a Gus- 
tav Adolf over seas, an Oliver Cromwell over seas. 
Selfish and sensual, a lover of the wine-cup and the 
boar hunt, Kur-Sachsen was an * unspeakable curse 
to Germany. A man of no strength, devoutness, or 
adequate human worth ;' and the Elector of Branden- 
burg was led by him of Saxony. At the outbreak 
of the great war Protestantism in Germany had but 
little to hope from its natural leaders. 

Then came the irresistible temptation for Fred- 
erick and Elizabeth. The great prize of a crown — 
that of Bohemia — was dangled before their eager 
eyes. 

When, in 1612, Matthias succeeded Rudolph II. 
as Emperor, he managed, by practice, to impose 

I 



130 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC 

upon Bohemia, as his successor to the crown of 
Bohemia, Ferdinand, son of the Archduke Charles, 
Prince of Styria. Both Rudolf and Matthias were 
childless men. Charles was brother to the Emperor 
Maximilian ; and both Charles and Maximilian were 
the sons of the Emperor Ferdinand I., and of Anne, 
heiress of Bohemia and Hungary. Bohemia resisted 
the nomination of Ferdinand as King, but could 
not shake off the yoke. The country was essentially 
Protestant, but saw its liberties invaded and its re- 
ligion proscribed by the fanatic, Jesuit-led monarch 
who was so ruthlessly forced upon the country. 
When, in 1619, Ferdinand was elected Emperor, as 
Ferdinand II., and ruled the Empire, being himself 
ruled by Father Lammerlein and Father Hyacinth, 
the Bohemians hastened to depose him as King of 
Bohemia, and to offer the crown to the best Protest- 
ant Prince who could be induced to accept the 
dangerous- dignity. It was promptly refused by 
Saxony and by Brandenburg, nor was it accepted even 
by the Prince of Transylvania ; and then, as a last 
resource, the crown of Bohemia was offered to Fred- 
erick. Anne of Denmark died (1619) before a crown 
was placed within the reach of ' Goody Palsgrave ; ' 
but there can be no doubt that the chance of be- 
coming Queen was welcomed by Elizabeth with 
light-hearted rapture. 

To Frederick every project was easy ; every action 
difficult. However he might secretly hesitate about 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 3 I 

accepting so perilous a crown, he was yet elated by 
the prospect, and he had his wife to lean upon. She 
chastised him with the valour of her tongue ; and 
she wrote to her father, asking James I. for his ap- 
proval and advice. Charles I. said, later, of the 
Palatine pair, that ' the grey mare was the better 
horse;' and Elizabeth's exultation overcame their 
sense of dread of danger. Meanwhile Frederick 
sought advice from various quarters. Saxony besought 
Frederick to remember that, in accepting the Bo- 
hemian crown, he hazarded the loss of his hereditary 
dominions. Max of Bavaria wrote in a frank, even 
cousinly way, and warned Frederick earnestly against 
acceptance. Max told his cousin how fickle the Bohe- 
mians were : ( You -want subjects ; they want a ser- 
vant :' and added that motives of interest alone im- 
pelled them to choose Frederick. Maurice of Nassau 
would not help, but did not dissuade. Had Maurice 
himself desired the Bohemian crown, he would, pro- 
bably, have won and have worn it ; but Frederick 
was not Maurice. Luise Juliane, the mother of 
Frederick, addressed her son in a letter of singular 
ability ( Memoires sur la vie et la mort de la 
Princesse Louise Juliane. Leyden, 1644), and this 
remarkable State paper is worth producing here. 
She said that ' the affairs of the Empire might 
soon be retrieved, and that the Pope would con- 
voke all Catholics to defend the Emperor. The 
King of France, however inimical to Austria, is not 



132 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

in a state to oppose its power ; the King of Spain 
will eagerly sustain it. As to the King of Great 
Britain, believe me, you little understand him if you 
persuade yourself he will break with Spain for your 
interests. On my brother Maurice, there is more 
reliance to be placed ; but the States will not sacri- 
fice Holland to the Palatinate. What aid can you 
expect from the King of Denmark ? He is too far 
distant. The houses of Saxony and of Bavaria are 
already jealous of yours, and will heartily concur in 
driving you from Bohemia. Trust not too much to 
the Protestant Union. . . . Distrust still more 
the Bohemians. If they offer you the crown, it is 
not that they love you better than another prince, 
but that they have no other resource. Do not flatter 
yourself they will be more constant to you than they 
have been to Ferdinand ; but, even though you could 
depend upon your kinsmen, your allies, your friends, 
and your subjects, you have neither troops nor 
treasures adequate to the charges of war.' Surely 
wise advice. Every prophecy of Luise Juliane was 
fulfilled by the bitter event. Frederick was not the 
man, nor had he the means, to obtain success in such 
a desperate venture. He was well known to the men 
of his own day and land ; no man would help because 
no man believed in him. Frederick could not oppose 
Ferdinand. Bohemian Protestantism could only be 
helped by German Protestantism ; but that, in 1619, 
was selfish and supine, and would by no means stir 



ELJZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 33 

for Frederick. If Frederick could not maintain him- 
self in Bohemia, and defend the Bohemians, his 
enterprise sank into a mere usurpation, which would 
give grounds for reprisals, and for the further oppres- 
sion of Protestantism. Nowhere in all Germany was 
there any enthusiasm for, any belief in, Frederick. 

Half deceiving themselves, Frederick and Elizabeth 
attempted to sanctify their decision with the name of 
religion, and veiled ambition under the pretext of 
piety. The Kaiser himself deigned to warn Frederick, 
though Ferdinand steadfastly refused to believe that 
Kurpfalz could contemplate a seizure of ' Austrian 
territory.' Meanwhile, Bohemia was pressing for 
Frederick's answer. His council in Heidelberg 
advised him to come to no decision until he should 
have heard from England ; but Elizabeth was not 
inclined to wait for anything. After declaring that. 
the chance was a call from God, she writes to 
Frederick, — ' Nor shall I repine whatever conse- 
quences may ensue ; not even though I should be 
forced to part with my last jewel, and to suffer 
actual hardship.' Soltl quotes another letter of hers 
in which she reminds Frederick that he has married 
the daughter of a King, and should not want courage 
to make his wife a Queen. Elizabeth concludes by 
saying, — - Rather Sauerkraut with a king than luxury 
with a prince.' This sentence expresses her real 
motives for decision, and exhibits her character ; 
which was ambitious, shallow, and fond of splendour. 



134 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Without waiting for her husband's final decision, she 
made all preparations for starting for Bohemia. 
Another pressing mission came from Prague, and 
Frederick was ultimately pushed over the edge of 
treason. As he rode away from Heidelberg, his 
weeping mother cried out, * Ach ! Du tragst die Pfalz 
nach Bohmen ! ' — ' Thou art carrying the Palatinate 
into Bohemia ! ■ 

The Palatinate itself was left under the Govern- 
ment of Zweibriicken ; but Frederick, who, in his 
incapacity, seemed to forget that he was burning his 
ships behind him, made no provision for the defence 
of his native territory. 

Frederick and Elizabeth entered Prague amid 
great rejoicings, on 31st October 1619. His corona- 
tion took place on November 4th. 

He immediately issued an address to his new- 
kingdom. This manifesto was large and loose and 
liberal as a modern hustings declaration. It promised 
everything to everybody, and was so framed as, if 
possible, to please all his subjects. 

Acting with the nervous hurry of small natures 
bent impatiently upon a darling project, Frederick 
and Elizabeth accepted the Bohemian crown without 
having waited for the reply of James I. 

James was, according to Clarendon, 'very quick- 
sighted in discerning difficulties, very slow in master- 
ing them.' His confused love of peace and poverty 
of spirit threw him into a perplexed astonishment 



ELIZABETH STUART. QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 35 

when he heard of the serious step taken by his son- 
in-law without his royal concurrence ; nor did he ever 
approve Frederick's Bohemian usurpation. It may 
well be contended that a King of England should not 
have wasted English blood and gold in the mere 
attempt to win a crown for a son-in-law ; but it may 
be a question whether, in the larger sense of Euro- 
pean politics, a great English King, the natural 
antagonist of Hapsburg ascendency, and natural 
defender of Protestantism, might not have enlarged 
the question into such an action of combined Pro- 
testantism as that which Gustavus Adolphus after- 
wards led. James might have wielded the strength 
of England, and such a war would have been highly 
popular. Frederick personally was liked, though he 
was not known in connection with great affairs, in 
England ; and his cause and that of Elizabeth would 
have merged into the greater cause of European civil 
and religious liberty. But James, a laggard in love 
and a dastard in war, was not the man for great 
causes. He might have ruined Austria and have 
served Protestantism ; but he was led by Gondomar, 
and was, probably, in reality a crypto -Catholic. 
Diego Sarmiento dc Acuiia, Count of Gondomar, 
reached London as Ambassador from Spain in 161 3 ; 
and soon acquired complete dominion over the lean- 
souled King. Marc Antonio, Archbishop of Spalatro, 
was made Dean of Windsor in 1618 : and Goodman, 
yet more Catholic than Laud, sat upon the bench of 



136 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

bishops. Rightly had Luise Juliane said that James 
would not break with Spain. The Spanish marriage 
was dangled before his eyes by the astute Gondomar. 
On 4th of November 1616, the rickety Duke of 
York (afterwards Charles I.), had been created Prince 
of Wales ; and James burned to match his son with 
the blood of Hapsburg. James hastened to disavow 
his unfortunate son-in-law ; he would not recognise 
Frederick as King of Bohemia, and he apologised to 
Ferdinand for Frederick's 'usurpation' of Austrian 
territory. The Spanish leanings of James were, until 
the Spanish match was broken off in failure and con- 
tempt, very pronounced ; and were as stable as any- 
thing in his unvirile nature could be stable or strong. 
The first Stuart Kings, who robbed the English 
Nation of the Church of Elizabeth Tudor, drove the 
force and passion of the National religious character 
into Puritanism; into the ' sectaries ' — Presbyterians, 
Independents, Anabaptists — into those intense, if 
gloomy convictions which animated the Ironsides, 
and rode in victory through the red fields of Naseby 
and of Marston Moor. 

The German title of ' Winter-Konig' is, being inter- 
preted rather than translated, to be rendered into 
English as a mockery ' King of Snow.' An estimable 
country gentleman may be a very poor monarch ; and 
incapable, fatuous Frederick, whose very amiability 
increases the contempt felt for him by history as a 
King, soon began to melt away. Anxieties com- 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. I 37 

menced early to surround the new royalties of the 
hapless King and Queen of fickle Bohemia ; and yet 
their first time in the palace of Prague was one of 
unalloyed triumph and exultation, especially to the 
sanguine, pomp-loving Elizabeth. Feast succeeded 
feast ; ceremony followed ceremony ; she was, at last, 
a Queen, and Elizabeth was royally happy. Despite 
the tolerant tone of poor Frederick's 'hustings' mani- 
festo,' he too, as a Calvinist, was priest-ridden. He 
took with him to Prague his narrow and bigoted 
chaplain, Schulze {Scultetus), and the interfering 
minister soon embittered both Catholics and Luth- 
erans against his royal master. 

Bohemia became gradually dissatisfied with its 
new King. It was found that Frederick could 
neither help Bohemia nor himself ; and that he 
could bring no help from outside. Elizabeth, who 
in the flush of her triumph was extremely gracious, 
and was always graceful, was, for a time, popular ; 
but Bohemia found that there was but little behind 
that superficial gracefulness. Neither Frederick nor 
Elizabeth could speak, nor could understand, the 
Bohemian language. The split between Court and 
Nation widened, until Frederick found himself in 
the position of a timid and unskilful rider mounted, 
without saddle or bridle, on an unbroken, vicious 
horse. 

They that stand high, have many blasts to shake them ; 
And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces ; 



138 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

and none stand in greater danger than those who, im- 
pelled by their own vanity, and assisted by accident, 
have attained to an elevation for which they are in- 
competent. He who, in the seventeenth century, 
would usurp a possession of the House of Austria 
must have been a warrior who could hold what he 
had seized in the tenacious grip of an iron gauntlet. 

The dangers thickened round them ; and Frederick, 
with his want of insight, and confused vision, was 
like a short-sighted man before the invention of 
spectacles. A miner does not notice the lengthening 
or shortening of the days. Frederick, in the dark- 
ness of his incapacity, seemed unconscious of the 
fate that was surely drawing near. The Pope Paul 
said : ' That young man has got himself entangled 
in a nice labyrinth.' Ferdinand absolutely refused 
at first to give credence to the report of Frederick's 
coronation. Such blind audacity seemed to the 
Emperor incredible. The Protestant Princes, meet- 
ing at Miilhausen, under the guidance of Saxony, 
wrote to Frederick, urging him to relinquish the 
crown, and not to involve the cause of Protestantism 
with * his rebellion.' The Emperor curtly summoned 
Frederick to vacate the throne by the 1st June; 
failing which — ban of the Empire and war. Spinola 
and his Spaniards were gathering to march on the 
Palatinate ; the Kriegsvolk, the war-folk of the Liga, 
were assembling for the Empire. Spinola led one 
army — Tilly and Bucquoy the other. The Palatinate 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 39 

had been left defenceless ; what would Frederick do 
to defend his new kingdom ? The Bohemians were 
tired of Frederick, and were in dread of Ferdinand. 
Frederick's army was indifferent in point of quality, 
and had no heart in the cause ; there was no disci- 
pline and but little pay. The troops had to live 
by plunder ; and, indeed, they seized Elizabeth's 
private jewels, as they were being conveyed to 
Prague, and confiscated their own Queen's gems. 
Frederick was not the man to teach drill, to enforce 
discipline, to lend a soul to an army, or to inspire 
it with confidence in its King and leader. His 
affairs were ready to tumble to ruin. Elizabeth 
refused to quit Prague, and held on to the last to 
the seat of her brief Queenship. 

The smaller fight of Rakonitz was lost for 
Frederick ; and, on Sunday, November 8, 1620, 
the Imperialists attacked Prague ; and the battle 
of the White Mountain — a battle which lasted 
only one hour — completed the defeat and ruin 
of the wretched Frederick. Most characteristically, 
Frederick was at dinner, at a stately dinner which 
he gave to the Ambassadors, during this crowning 
fight for his own crown and interests. ' After dinner, 
the King resolved to go to horse to see the army ; 
but before the King could get out of the gate, the 
news came of the loss of the Bohemian and the 
royal cause.' The fact is, Frederick was driven 
back through the city gate by his own troops, who, 



140 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

in full rout, crying out, ' The battle is lost!' were 
tumbling pell-mell into the city, to gain the protec- 
tion of its walls. 

It was intended to defend Prague, in order to secure 
the retreat of Elizabeth, but she herself opposed the 
measure. Cousin Max granted an armistice of eight 
hours ; during which the King and Queen fled 
wildly, and in such haste that they left behind them 
crown, papers, jewels — almost everything that they 
had. Prague, with terror in its heart, did trembling 
homage to the incensed Emperor. Frederick had 
taken the Palatinate to Bohemia ; had lost crown,. 
Elector's hat, his new kingdom, and his ancient 
inheritance. He was to become a penniless, dis- 
crowned fugitive, and under the terrible ban of the 
Empire. 

The hardships which Elizabeth had been willing 
to incur for the sake of a crown had come upon 
her. as, with husband and with child, but reft of all 
else, she fled through the snow of a severe winter 
to Breslau in Silesia. The Markgraf Georg Wilhelm 
of Brandenburg had married (in 1616) Frederick's 
sister, Elizabetha Karolina ; but the timid brother* 
in-law hesitated, at first, to grant to the hapless- 
couple refuge in Custrin ; where, on December 25,. 
1620, Elizabeth's son, Maurice, was born. Rupert, 
the ' Rupert of the Rhine,' of our Civil Wars, was 
born in Prague, December 20, 1619. In 1617, 
Karl Ludwig ; in 1618, Elizabeth was born ; indeed^ 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 141 

the first dozen years of Elizabeth's life abroad are 
all speckled with confinements. 

Frederick preached resistance, and called loudly 
iipon every one to help him. Meantime the Upper 
and Lower Palatinates were overrun by Spinola ; 
and Heidelberg was taken by Tilly. Without con- 
sulting the Electors, the high - handed Ferdinand 
gave the Palatinate Electorship to Max of Bavaria, 
who also got the Upper Palatinate, while the Lower 
was, for the moment, given to Archduke Albert. 
The Archduke died July 13, 1621, and then the 
Lower Palatinate fell also to Maximilian. Max 
* had done more than any Emperor could expect/ 
and deserved reward from a grateful Kaiser. On 
December 13, 1621, all Protestant preachers and 
teachers were rejected from Bohemia. On February 
28, 162 1, Tilly put to death, in Prague, some eight- 
and-forty of the best and noblest citizens, on a large 
public scaffold, similar to those used by Alba, for 
similar purposes, in the Netherlands. The tongues 
of some were torn out by the roots ; the right hands 
of others were hacked off. Confiscation, persecution, 
death and misery succeeded Frederick in Bohemia. 

On January 22, 162 1, the Ban was pronounced 
against Frederick. On April 12, 1621, the Pro- 
testant Union dissolved itself. The whole Palatinate 
was subjected, compulsorily, to the Romish religion, 
and the Pope wrote to the Emperor to congratu- 
late him upon the triumph of Catholicism. Truly, 



142 STUDIES IN HISTORY. LEGEND, ETC. 

Frederick's zeal for religion had -done but little for 
the Protestant cause. 

Frederick and Elizabeth took refuge in Holland,, 
and were received with great kindness by the 
generous States-General. Even James, stung by 
the violent seizure of the Palatinate, awoke to a 
certain passionate activity — of words. On January 
30, 1621, the King told the Parliament, 'Now shall 
I labour to preserve the rest ; wherein I declare 
that, if by fair means I cannot get it, my crown, my 
blood, and all, shall be spent, with my son's blood 
also, but I will get it for him (Frederick). And 
this is the cause of all, that the cause of religion is 
involved in it ; for they will alter religion when 
they conquer, and so, perhaps, my grandchild also 
may suffer, who hath committed no fault at 
all' 

Brave words! But James ( dared not strike one 
blow for the inheritance of his daughter's children,, 
and was dallying with the oppressors of the people 
and of the Church of God.' Of James' negotiations 
Nani (quoted by Mr Samuel Rawson Gardiner) says,, 
* His first proposals to Vienna might have been 
listened to, but they were so impracticable and' 
absurd that the subtle Spaniards soon saw what sort 
of person they had to deal with, and availed them- 
selves accordingly of his improbable schemes and 
delays; they knew, likewise, that James trembled at 
war, and abominated a rebellion.' 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. HJ 

The polite evasion of contempt was the only 
answer obtained by James. 

On January 30th, James, seeking for popularity, 
told the Parliament that religion ' was the cause of 
all ;' and yet Gondomar reports to Philip (Simancas 
MSS.) — also quoted by Mr Gardiner — on February 
1 8th, the pith of a memorable conversation between 
James and himself, held on February 2d, in which 
James admitted that he was ' ready to acknowledge 
his readiness to recognise the Pope as the head of 
the Church in matters spiritual, and to allow appeals 
to lie to him from English Bishops, provided the 
Pope would refrain from meddling with temporal 
jurisdiction in his (James') kingdoms, and would re- 
nounce his claim to depose kings at pleasure. If in 
his writings he (James) had spoken of the Pope 
as Antichrist, it was because of his usurped power 
over kings, and not because he called himself the 
head of the Church ; ' and, in testimony to the 
truth of this statement, the King gave his hand to 
the delighted ambassador. The Pope might have 
the diviner right, but yet was not to interfere with 
the ' divine right ' of kings. 

Elizabeth implored her father to take action for the 
recovery of Bohemia as well as the Palatinate, and, 
by her advice, Frederick refused to lay aside the title 
of King of Bohemia. In this dark hour of her 
fortunes, Elizabeth, a true Stuart, with a nature 
satisfied with the pleasures of the present, writes to 



144 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador (she 
always addressed him as 'Honest Thorn'), 'yett I 
am still of my wilde humour, to be as merrie as I 
can in spite of fortune.' The gentler Frederick felt 
his misfortunes, and especially the loss of his here- 
ditary possessions, more keenly. 'The Winter 
King's account was soon settled ; ' but the Elector's 
loss was harder to bear, and this loss he owed partly 
to Elizabeth, partly to his own imbecility. 

German political sympathy was, to a great extent, 
with Frederick so far as the Palatinate was con- 
cerned ; but it was also felt that Frederick, in taking 
Bohemia, had done to Ferdinand the same thing 
which the Emperor, in savage reprisal, had done to 
the Elector. The sentiment of the sacredness of 
hereditary possession was then strong among the 
German Powers. The monarchy of Bohemia was 
not, in a practical sense, an elective monarchy. In 
default of an hereditary succession, the crown of 
Bohemia was seizable by him who could take and 
hold it. The crown had on various occasions been 
the prey of violence and fraud, and had been mainly 
at the mercy of the Kaiser. Thus, Matthias com- 
pelled the weak Rudolf to cede Bohemia to him ; 
and Matthias, when he was elected Emperor, com- 
pelled the Bohemians to accept Ferdinand. The 
unfortunate, if fickle, Bohemians constantly saw 
their religion and their liberties outraged by 
Catholics and by tyrants. They sought freedom 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 145 

by means of a Protestant Prince, and, failing in 
obtaining one of power and mark, they had the mis- 
fortune to see their ruin consummated by their last 
resource, Frederick. Their hope that the Union, that 
the German Protestant Powers, that England, would 
support Frederick was soon shown to be the shadow 
■of a shade. 

Two defenders sprang up for the lost cause of 
Frederick and Elizabeth. One was a partisan of 
policy ; the other a champion of chivalry. The first 
was Count Mansfeld ; the second was Christian of 
Brunswick. 

Mansfeld was the ablest adventurer, the most suc- 
cessful soldier of fortune of his land and day. He 
had strong reasons for hating Austria, and hated her 
.accordingly. 

Christian was a man of a very different stamp. He 
was Geschzuisterkind (first cousin) of Elizabeth (Soltl), 
and was born Sept. 10, 1599. He was, therefore, 
three years younger than Elizabeth. Christian's 
mother, also an Elizabeth, was the daughter of 
Frederick II. of Denmark. Christian first met 
Elizabeth Stuart when, after the disastrous day of the 
White Mountain, she had taken refuge in Holland. 
He was charmed with his cousin ; he felt knightly 
sympathy for a Queen's misfortunes : a passionate 
Protestant, he glowed with true zeal for Elizabeth's 
religion. Burning for military glory, a fanatic of 
chivalry, a knight-errant of romantic devotion ; high- 

K 



I46 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

flown, sombre, and intense, Christian eagerly devoted 
life and fortune to his cousin and her cause. He 
wore her glove in his helmet ; he adopted as his 
motto, f Alles fur Ruhm und ihr ' — 4 All for glory and 
for her.' He called himself ' Gottes Freund, der 
Pfaffen Feind ' — ' The friend of God, the foe of 
priests.' When, after a wound at the siege of 
Breda, his arm had to be amputated, he caused the 
trumpets to sound while the operation was performed, 
and said that ' the arm he had left would be enough 
for revenge upon his enemies.' Heroic as a knightly 
champion, Christian was yet unsuccessful as a 
general. Intrepid, rash, and headstrong, he was 
easily beaten by the wily Tilly. Mansfeld was abler 
and more successful ; but their joint help had really 
availed but little when Frederick saw himself com- 
pelled (partly by pressure put upon him by his 
father-in-law) to dismiss the two generals who — the 
one from hatred of Austria, the other from love to 
Elizabeth — bravely maintained and kept alive a fall- 
ing cause. 

After the bitter step of such a dismissal, Frederick 
would seem to have begun to suffer from life-weari- 
ness. He stood apart, and left his affairs mainly to 
his sprightly wife, and to the Secretary Russdorf. 

It is impossible in this short essay to narrate all 
the battles, sieges, fortunes which occurred in the 
great war, even in so far as such events may have 
indirectly affected the fortunes of the Palatine House. 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. 1 47 

Much must necessarily be passed over, and I am 
compelled to restrict myself to those leading occur- 
rences which were most clearly determinate of the 
fortunes of Germany, and by consequence of those of 
Elizabeth Stuart. 

The next great event which was of vital moment 
for Europe and for Elizabeth was the advent, from 
-over-seas, of the great Schwedenkonig, Gustavus 
Adolphus. In July 1630, the Swedish deliverer 
landed on German soil. He had completed his 
conquest over Poland. He knew well that the Polish 
war had been fomented, he knew that Sigismund had 
been supported, by Austria ; he knew that, if Wallen- 
stein could create a fleet, the House of Hapsburg, 
eager for universal dominion, and then in the zenith 
of its power and success, would attack him in Sweden 
itself; and he defended his kingdom by attacking 
her enemies. The very successes of Ferdinand drew 
down Gustavus Adolphus upon him ; the supineness 
of the German Protestant Princes called forth the 
great Swedish defender of Protestantism. i Univer- 
sal monarchy must be repressed by neighbouring 
nations at great hazard and inconceivable expense, 
provided such nations are only protected by a small 
interposition of ocean.' Wallenstein and Spain were 
preparing a fleet to attack the navy of Sweden when 
that navy bore Gustav Adolf and his army to Ger- 
man soil. 



148 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Nor was it by any means the safety of Sweden 
alone which called Gustavus into the field. ' Mich 
treibt ein anderer Geist,' ' I am actuated by other 
motives,' said the King;. It was the cause, the great 
cause, of Protestantism and of true religion that 
weighed most heavily upon his soul. Hear him for 
a moment ; his voice still seems to speak vitally to 
us across the abyss of two hundred and fifty years. 
' I embark in a war, far from my own dominions, and 
seem to court those dangers and difficulties which 
another man might labour to decline ; but the 
Searcher of the human heart will see and know 
that it was neither ambition that tempted me, nor the 
avarice of extending my dominions, nor the appetite 
of fighting, nor the mischievous temper of loving to 
interfere in my neighbours' concerns. Other object 
I have none than to support the afflicted and op- 
pressed, to maintain the religious and civil liberty of 
society, and to bear my testimony against a tyranny 
over the whole human race.' 

And Gustavus described his lofty motives truly. 
If the Protestant princes of Germany were supine, 
her Protestant people were worthy ; nor could the 
King endure the spectacle of Jesuit rule, through 
Kaiser and through Pope, carried out by means of 
blood and fire, of force and fraud ; of infra-human 
persecution by the priest. Gustavus is a singular 
historical apparition, in respect that he combined the 
earnestness of a Cromwell with the grace of a cavalier. 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 49 

He was not Gott-betmnken, or God-intoxicated, as 
Novalis said of Spinoza, but he was God-inspired. 
A hero of conscience, he was also a hero of charm. 
He could not only command the reverence, but also 
win the love of men. In him force was tempered 
by sweetness. Intense as clear, there was nothing 
gloomy or morbid about the strong bright Gus- 
tavus. No cause ever had a nobler champion ; but 
his kingly and knightly mind was expressed through 
his broad, lofty forehead ; through his well-opened, 
blue, and steadfast eyes ; through a figure and bear- 
ing which approach to an ideal of great manhood. 
His religion was that of a royal man, his politics 
those of a manly king. Fervent, and even rash in 
fight, generous in victory, the first captain of his 
time, he fought for an abstract cause, and defended 
oppressed humanity. Stern where sternness was ne- 
cessary, he was full of ' flowing courtesy ' and princely 
manners. His army was well paid, and restrained 
within the limits of strict discipline. It was a moral 
force, which paid, and did not plunder its way 
through the territory of friend and foe. In this re- 
spect the S we do-German army differed from those 
of the Liga, of the Empire, and even from the troops 
of Mansfeld. • Der Krieg miisse den Krieg ernahren/ 
' War must support itself/ said Wallenstein ; and 
the armies of Tilly, of Wallenstein, of Mansfeld, 
simply devastated any territories that they had to 
occupy. 



I50 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

In earlier years Gustavus had been a half suitor 
for the hand of Elizabeth Stuart, and was therefore 
likely, being of noble mould, to have a kindly feel- 
ing toward an olden love. The light of the North, 
the Aurora Borealis of the Baltic, was now happily 
married to Maria Eleanora, sister of the Kurfiirst 
Johann Georg. Gustav was born on December 9, 
1594. 

James I. died in 1625, and had been succeeded by 
his son, Charles I. Charles was her brother, and 
Elizabeth might, perhaps, hope more from a brother 
than even from a father. 

Charles was very willing to do anything to help 
his sister — so long as the doing involved no action. 
So soon as Gustavus appeared victoriously upon the 
scene, Charles tried to delegate to him the task of 
restoring Elizabeth to the Palatinate. 

On November 7, 1632, Sir Henry Vane, suc- 
cessor to Roe, met the Swedish King at Wiirz- 
burg, and Vane thus reports Gustavus' answer : * If 
Charles wished sincerely to bring about the restitu- 
tion of the Palatinate (no question more of Bohemia) 
and wished it in good faith, he must afford such 
assistance as justly merited the appellation of royal' 
If Charles contributed money and an English army 
of 12,000. men, he, Gustavus, 'would never sheath 
his sword until the Palatinate should be recovered/ 
Vainly did Gustav expect anything royal (except, 
perhaps, the portraits of Vandyke) from Charles, 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 5 I 

who was negotiating with Vienna when he should 
have been fighting side by side with Sweden. If 
he had really wished well to his sister's cause, there 
was no way to help her but by fighting. Spann- 
heim records that James I. felt, in his last days and 
hours, some compunction and remorse with respect 
to the Palatinate. Forty-eight hours before his 
death, James charged his son Charles, ' as he hoped 
for a parent's benediction and that of Heaven.' to 
-exert all his powers in order to reinstate his sister 
and her children into their hereditary dominions ; 
for (said James) it was my mistake to seek the Pala- 
tinate in Spain. The italics are ours. 

Charles was as incapable as had been his father 
of clear and noble action. 

' My God, Sire ! ' exclaimed Sir Richard Glendale, 
to the Pretender, when that Prince landed ' for a hunt- 
ing expedition,' in Redganntlet — ' of what great and 
inexpiable crime can your Majesty's ancestors have 
been guilty that they have been punished by the 
infliction of judicial blindness on their whole genera- 
tion !' In this indignant burst of Sir Richard Glen- 
dale, Walter Scott summarised the essence of the 
career of the Stuarts. 

Ferdinand never refused to negotiate. Negotia- 
tions, as for instance that for the restoration of the 
Palatinate, amused others and did not hurt him. 
Besides, while people were negotiating, they were 
not likely to act ; and this was true of Charles, as it 



152 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

had been of James. Conscious of his violent aggres- 
sion in the Palatinate, the Emperor was ready to 
restore that — if any one could or would compel him 
to do so — but he would never give it up to mere 
negotiation. Charles's ambassador at Vienna, Sir 
Robert Anstruther, had been instructed to say to 
Ferdinand (22d of July 1630) that 'the King, his 
master (Charles I.), acknowledged with grief and 
shame that his brother-in-law, the Elector Palatine, 
disregarding his opinion and concurrence, had acted 
formerly in reference to the crown of Bohemia, not 
only rashly, but unadvisedly, which imprudent meas- 
ures ought chiefly to be attributed to the ambition 
and inattention of youth ; and that it would highly be- 
come the Emperor, consistently with his accustomed 
clemency, to receive Frederick's submission, and re- 
instate him in his own dominions, inasmuch as such 
an act of free and gratuitous favour would oblige the 
kings of England to all posterity.' 

To amuse Charles, a counter proposition was made 
from Vienna, to the effect that Frederick should re- 
sign the Upper Palatinate for ever to Bavaria ; that 
he, Frederick, should receive a small pension for his 
own life ; that his eldest son should be bred a Catho- 
lic at Vienna, and then, having espoused an Austrian 
Archduchess, be reinstated, at his father's death, in 
the Lower Palatinate. Further, that Frederick should, 
on his knees, ask pardon of the Emperor. 

It was clear that Charles, who was incapable of 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 53 

royal or other decisive action, desired to lean upon 
Gustavus for the reinstatement of his sister. 

Charles urged Elizabeth to allow her son to be 
educated as a Catholic in Vienna, but the ex-Queen, 
whose character was much more positive than that 
of her unstable brother, replied with noble anger, that, 
' sooner than see her children brought up as Catholics, 
she would kill them with her own hand/ Both 
Elizabeth and Frederick remained always steadfast 
in their religion, nor could any prospect of advantage 
ever lure them from it. 

All that Charles could do was to permit — but not as 
King — English volunteers to fight for the Palatinate ; 
and the Marquis of Hamilton led some 6000 volun- 
teers, who did not do very much, to Germany. These 
were speedily reduced to one English and one 
Scottish regiment, and, after a quarrel with Banier, 
Hamilton resigned and his force melted away. 

We cannot spare space to follow the great Swedish 
King through his glorious campaign. He would 
have recovered the Palatinate in due time, as he did 
recover for his kinsmen the Duchy of Mecklenburg 
which Wallenstein had seized ; but Gustavus could 
not turn aside from his main purpose, which was to 
prevent the extirpation of Protestants and Protestant- 
ism in Germany, in order merely to recover the Palatin- 
ate without help from Charles. Making it a condition 
that Frederick, if reinstated, should tolerate Lutheran- 
ism in his dominions, Gustavus sent to Holland for 



154 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Frederick to join his armies. Frederick was unfit 
for any command in the warlike monarch's forces, but 
he was * present ' at Niirnberg, and at that memorable 
passage of the Lech, at which Gustavus's valour and 
strategy so completely defeated the veteran Tilly. 
After Breitenfield, the King thought that the Pala- 
tinate cause was hopeful, and wrote to that effect to 
Charles, requiring from the English King ' magnani- 
mous resolution/ an assistance in men and money 
and the despatch of a fleet to cope with the fleet 
that Spain was sending to the Baltic. 

Charles refused the necessary co-operation, but ex- 
plained that he was ready to negotiate. 

And now Gustavus and Wallenstein, the two great 
captains of the age, each at the head of an hitherto 
unconquered army, met, for the first time, as op- 
ponents in. actual war on the fatal plain of Liitzen. 
The battle was indecisive in result, though victory 
leaned to the Swedes, as the imperialists vacated the 
field and retreated on Leipzig ; but the battle in- 
volved the most terrible loss that could have hap- 
pened to the Protestant cause — Gustavus Adolphus 
fell in the arms of victory. 

With the fall of Gustavus the cause of the Pala- 
tinate seemed to be hopelessly lost. What other 
champion could replace the ' Lion of the North ? ! 

After Liitzen, Frederick became a prey to deep 
dejection. He died of a broken heart, of utter de- 
spondency, away from wife and children, at Mentz, 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. I 55 

on November 17, 1636. His coffined corpse, after 
many wanderings, found its final resting-place in 
Sedan. 

His son and heir, Henry Frederick, a prince of 
promise, had predeceased his father. On January 
17, 1629, father and son went to see the trophies of 
Peter Hein as they floated in Dutch waters at Rotter- 
dam. The small boat in which they sailed was run 
into by another craft, and speedily sank. Frederick 
was saved, but his heir was drowned. The son's last 
vain cry was, ( Save me, father ! ' That last despairing 
cry of the sinking prince rings still pathetically through 
history. Thus Karl Ludwig, the second son, became 
the representative of the banished Palatine family. 

Elizabeth and Frederick were united by a sincere 
affection and by a numerous progeny. Misfortune 
borne in common, a faith thoroughly shared, strength- 
ened their union. Frederick's nature was capable of 
a deeper tenderness than was that of his wife. His 
fondness for her was unquestionably great. Many of 
his letters to her (see Bromley's Royal Letters) are 
still extant. In one he writes : — ' Would to God that 
we owned some little corner of the earth in which we 
•could live together happily and in peace ! ' It were to 
be wished that his prayer could have been answered. 
As private persons, they would have been most 
estimable, most happy ; but they were elevated into 
positions high above their capacities. Frederick con- 
stantly addressed his wife, ' Mon tres cher Cceur.' 



156 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Elizabeth passed her widowhood at the Hague or 
at Rhenen, in the province of Utrecht, secure under 
Dutch shelter. She was fond of hunting and of 
gardening. Her children grew up around her, and 
the still lively lady became the centre of a small but 
cultured circle of friends. Elizabeth's little court was 
a model of social gaiety, and flatterers called it the 
' home of all the muses and of all the graces.' Her 
elastic temperament was cheerful under misfortune. 
She could always enjoy any pleasure that the present 
moment offered. Once, when hunting, she was nearly 
seized by some Spanish soldiery, but escaped owing 
to a fleet horse and her good riding. Henrietta 
Maria had been a bitter opponent at the Court of 
England of the interests of Elizabeth ; but when 
Henrietta Maria, herself a fugitive, came to Holland,. 
Elizabeth received and comforted her. Both were 
Stuarts, the one by birth, the other by marriage ; and 
their interests in Great Britain were imperilled by the 
same foes. There may have been policy in Eliza- 
beth's kindness. Her eldest surviving son, Karl 
Ludwig, who had been educated by Frederick's- 
brother, grew up headstrong, selfish, and avaricious- 
When in England he sided w r ith the Parliament, and 
even sat in the Westminster Assembly of Divines. 

He ultimately obtained from the English Parliament 
a yearly grant of ;£ 10,000 — ,£8000 for himself, £2000* 
for his mother ; but Elizabeth was deeply grieved at 
her son's departure from the traditional and even. 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. I 57 

natural politics of the house of Stuart. Her next sons, 
Rupert and Maurice, fought, as is well known, and 
with distinction, on the royal side, and this was some 
comfort to the daughter of James and sister of 
Charles. Ever after the execution of her brother, 
Elizabeth wore a mourning ring (a picture of which 
is now before me) on which a crown surmounts a 
skull and cross-bones, while both are encircled by a 
lock of Charles's hair. 

Cousin Max, who thought that all misfortunes arose 
from tolerance to Protestants, was getting on with the 
conversion to Catholicism of the upper and lower 
Palatinates. His plan was simple and direct. Every 
person who would not become a Catholic was driven 
out of the territory. Max was fully determined to 
root out heresy. 

The ' counter- Reformation ' in Germany was being 
carried out with incredible cruelty and ruthless per- 
sistency. The hopeless and hapless ' peasants' war - 
was extirpated with terrible inhumanity. Protestant 
parents were expelled, and their children detained 
to be brought up as Catholics. Soltl, speaking of 
the oppression then exercised upon the unhappy 
Protestants, says, ' davon schweigt die Geschichte/ on 
that subject history is silent. In Bavaria the popular 
threat to an enemy remains to this day, ' Ich will dich 
schon Katholisch machen ! ' — 'I will force you to be- 
come a Catholic ! } and this threat to tame and to 
compel dates from the counter-reformation under the 



158 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

House of Hapsburg. The Jesuit view was, that heretics 
should be subjected to a yoke intolerable, but yet 
not to be shaken off. The Papal Ambassador, 
Caraffa, agreed with the Emperor that heretics should 
be rooted out without pity and without scruple. 

On February 12, 1637, Ferdinand II. died, and 
was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand III., who carried 
on the lines of his father's policy. ' Mi Fili, parvo 
mundus regitur intellectu/ said the wise Oxenstierna. 

The great war dragged its slow length along, but 
we cannot spare space to follow its fortunes. 

Among the partisans who were attracted, in part 
by her personality, to the cause of Elizabeth, the 
most distinguished and the most constant was 
William, Lord Craven, afterwards Earl Craven. 
Christian of Brunswick died May 6, 1626, and 
Prince Maurice of Nassau had passed away on April 
23, 1625. Craven first met Elizabeth when she was 
already a refugee in Holland, and he quitted the 
Dutch service in order to devote himself to that of 
the ex-Queen of Bohemia. History contains few 
instances of a more chivalrous, romantic, self-sacri- 
ficing friendship. His purse and person (Craven was 
rashly brave) were both zealously devoted to the 
service of his royal mistress. Munificent in outlay, 
indefatigable in military activity, reckless in contempt 
of danger, Craven might well have adopted Christian's 
motto, ■ All for glory and for her ; ' the only difference 
being that Craven thought more of her than he did 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. I 59 

of glory. In Christian the passions had been mixed. 
Gustavus himself paid a compliment to Craven's 
valour ; and of all the volunteers — Reay, Hepburn, 
and others — who fought for her, and for the Palatinate, 
Craven was animated by the purest devotion. He 
was entrusted by Elizabeth with the care of the fiery 
young Rupert, when both were taken prisoners by 
the Emperor. Craven paid for his freedom a ransom 
of ^20,000. Rupert was detained for three years 
in mild captivity, the object being to convert him 
to the Church of Rome. During the dark days — 
days dark for the Stuarts — of the Protectorate,, 
Craven's estates were sequestrated ; though they were 
restored to him at the Restoration ; but he found 
means still to help his mistress. In Elizabeth's 
saddest hour, when she seemed to be abandoned of 
all men, the faithful Craven remained by her side, 
and he returned with her to England. There is no 
evidence of such a fact (indeed evidence on the 
subject would be very hard to procure), but history 
whispers that the pair were privately married. Certain 
it is that nothing could detach Craven from her side,, 
and that his life and fortune — all that he had — were 
unceasingly and loyally devoted to her comfort and 
her service. In 1661, Pepys saw Elizabeth in London,, 
'brought by my Lord Craven ' to the Duke's Theatre. 
A Paladin of Romance, Craven remains one of the 
noblest instances in history of a knightly, generous,, 
unswerving devotion to a woman and her cause. 



1 00 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Let us now glance for a moment at the domestic 
relations of Elizabeth. 

She had around her, in Holland, four daughters — 
Elizabeth, born 1618 ; Luise, born 1622; Henrietta 
Maria, born 1626; Sophia, born 1630 ; and her two 
younger sons, Edward and Philipp, were also for a 
time with her. 

Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, was the plainest of 
the sisters. She was quiet, melancholy, absorbed in 
study. In 1636, Ladislaus of Poland proposed for 
Elizabeth, but she peremptorily refused to marry 
a Catholic Prince. Des Cartes (born 1596) was the 
friend, the tutor, the correspondent of this learned 
daughter of Frederick and of Elizabeth, who re- 
mained unmarried, and ultimately became Abbess of 
the Protestant Stift of Herford, in Westphalia. She 
died in 1680. 

Of Henrietta Maria there is no vivid record, but 
she married, 165 1, Prince Ragoczy von Siebenblirgen. 

Luise was pretty, and was lively. She was a 
paintress of repute in her own little circle, and seems 
to have loved gaiety and society. 

Sophia — the ablest and most beautiful of the 
daughters — ' one of the handsomest, the most cheer- 
ful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women/ says 
Thackeray — married, 1658, Ernst August, Bishop of 
Osnabriick, and brother of the Duke of Brunswick. 
This lady, called in our history books ' the Electress 
Sophia,' is the direct ancestress of our present Royal 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. l6l 

Family. In 1672 her husband succeeded to the pos- 
session of Hanover and to the Electoral dignity. In 
1714, a few weeks after his mother's death, her son, 
•George Ludwig, succeeded Anne on the throne of 
Great Britain as George I. This boorish, ungraceful 
prince recalled no suggestion of his bright mother, 
but seemed to have absorbed a terribly large infusion 
of the characteristics of his ungainly father. The 
English nation specially settled the succession on 
Sophia and her Protestant descendants, while passing 
over the claims of all her brothers and sisters. 

Her brother Edward, and his brother Philipp, were 
sent to Paris to ' finish their education/ a plan which 
was not attended with happy results. They were 
probably glad enough to go, and to escape from the 
weary routine, from the intrigues, littlenesses, spites, 
of their mother's mock Court in Holland. r 

Elizabeth does not seem to have been very suc- 
cessful in educating or in securing the love of her 
children. Her daughters, Elizabeth and Sophia, 
voluntarily left their mother to go to Kassel or to 
Heidelberg. In 1645, ner son Edward married Anna, 
daughter of the Duke of Nevers, and turned Catholic, 
his apostacy being doubtless a serious sorrow to his 
mother. Karl Ludwig wrote very angrily to his 
recusant brother ; but the life of Edward was there- 
after lived apart from the main current of the career 
of his family. It is certain that Edward married in 
Paris, where he found favour and countenance, with- 

L 



3 62 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

out his mother's knowledge or consent, and that this 
step and his perversion were a sore surprise to her. 
Philipp had a quarrel in the Hague with a certain 
debauched Sieur d'Epinay ; and on the day following, 
January 20, 1646, Philipp, assisted by his myrmidons, 
killed d'Epinay, for which offence he had to fly Holland. 
In 1655, Philipp was killed at the siege of Rethel. 

In 1644, the noble Luise Juliane, the generous 
mother-in-law of Elizabeth, died. 

The conduct of Rupert and of Maurice in the Civil 
Wars had alienated the English Government from 
Elizabeth Stuart, and, to some extent, she had 
become an object of dislike to the nation. During 
the late years of the Protectorate her allowance from 
England seems to have been withheld. 

One child only, her daughter Luise, remained to 
cheer the solitary mother. After some shadow of 
scandal, into the details of which history now vainly 
tries to pierce, Luise, one morning, was found to have 
left — to have fled from her lonely mother; but a few 
lines informed the distracted Elizabeth — ' I have gone 
to France, there to be reconciled to the true Church, 
and to enter a cloister.' This was a heavy blow to 
the still fervently Protestant widow of Frederick. 
Luise became Abbess of Maubuisson ; but hers was no 
austere, cloistered seclusion. She lived gaily, went to 
Court in Paris, and had, as Soltl tells us, ' many 
children.' Her conversion brought with it no retire- 
ment from the world, no asceticism of the cloister. 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 63 

Her last child having thus left her, Elizabeth could 
turn for comfort only to Lord Craven. We must now 
pass at a leap, and without regard to the tangle of 
petty events, to the Peace of Westphalia, which, in 
1648, virtually concluded the Thirty Years' War, and 
settled, among so many other things, the question of 
the Palatinate. 

The primary cause of that memorable peace was 
the thorough exhaustion of the combatants, and 
especially of the Catholic Powers. Exhaustion only, 
inability to continue the conflict, could have con- 
strained Rome, Spain, Austria to grant toleration to 
German Protestants. The result of thirty years of 
wastefully wicked war — of a war in which oceans of 
blood were unnecessarily shed, and in which unspeak- 
able human misery was caused — gave to Protestantism 
that for which it had contended at the beginning ; 
and Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist had to live together 
in mutual toleration, each belief holding its own as 
best it could in Germany. Henceforth the disciples 
of Loyola could not kill, oppress, or extirpate the 
followers of Luther or of Calvin ; and worn and 
wasted Germany, which had been for so long the 
scene of civil war, the battlefield of ruin, was no more 
subject to the lust of Hapsburg universal dominion 
or to the bloody tyranny of priestly rule. 

Despite of angry protests and of much 'negotia- 
tion,' Karl Ludwig could obtain no more than this— 
the restoration of the Lower Palatinate; while the 



164 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Upper Palatinate remained annexed to Bavaria. 
Both Max and Karl Ludwig were Electors ; Bavaria 
being the eighth Electorate, and ranking above 
Kurpfalz. The spirit of Gustavus had been at work 
up to the close of the sad, long war. It is noticeable 
that the Swedes were the strongest force then left in 
the field with power to fight. Wrangel (with whom 
was associated in command Turenne) was the last 
Swedish general. He entirely overran Bavaria, and, 
that done, no barrier stood between his victorious 
army and the gates of Vienna. This crowning 
success induced Maximilian, and compelled the 
Emperor, to agree, on equitable terms, to a peace. 
When Max demanded an armistice, he was, at first, 
held at Vienna as a Majestatsverbrecher, or traitor 
guilty of high-treason ; but it was soon seen that 
Max had not capitulated without very sufficient 
cause. He wished to stipulate that the Lower 
Palatinate, if he had to cede it, should remain 
Catholic ; but to this the victors would not agree. 
To the last, Sweden did good service to Pro- 
testantism. When the terms of peace became 
known, the Catholics were furious ; the Reformers 
were obstinate ; but maugre all objections, necessity 
had dictated an enduring treaty. Maximilian of 
Bavaria died at Ingolstadt the 27th of September 
1651. 

And so, as Kurpfalz, though with sadly shorn 
territory, Karl Ludwig, the son of the Winter-Komg 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 65 

returned to Heidelberg, and to his desolated, wasted, 
miserable land. Even the great library of Heidel- 
berg had been transported to the Vatican. Karl 
Ludwig married, 22d February 1650, Karoline, 
daughter of the Landgraf Wilhelm V., of Hessen. 
On 10th of April 1651, a son, Karl, was born to 
Karl Ludwig; and in 1652 he became the father of 
a daughter, Elizabetha Charlotta. When first he 
resumed residence in the Old Palace of the Palatinate, 
his sisters Sophia and Elizabeth were with him in 
Heidelberg. The new r Palatine's marriage was not a 
success. He entered into an undisguised intrigue 
with the Hof-frditlein, or Maid of Honour, Degenfeld, 
and his wife left him in indignation, and returned to 
her father in Kassel. 

Karl Ludwig was the most hateful of the children 
of Frederick and Elizabeth. He withheld from his 
brother Rupert Rupert's inheritance. He would not 
allow his mother to come to Heidelberg, nor would 
he pay to her the money that was justly hers. He re- 
fused her her jointure, and would not give her her 
dower of Frankenthal. He was karg tind geizig — 
mean and avaricious. There is something pathetic 
in Elizabeth's letters to Karl Ludwig. They express 
a mother's indignation at having to apply for her own 
to her own son, and then the sense of her necessities 
lends poignancy to her piteous appeals. It seems 
that she received 1000 guilders a month from Hol- 
land. She writes to Karl Ludwig, August 23, 1655, 



l66 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

' I do not ask you much. I pray do this for me ; you 
will much comfort me by it, who am in so ill con- 
dition as it takes all my contentment from me. I am 
making my house as little as I can so that I may 
subsist by the little I have, till I shall be able to 
come to you ; which since I cannot do because of my 
debts, which I am not able to pay, neither the new 
nor the old, if you do not as I desire, I am sure I 
shall not increase. As you love me, I do conjure you 
to give an answer.' 

In writing from the Hague to Prince Rupert on 
April 29th, year not given, she says (Bromley's Royal 
Letters), 'The next week I hope to hear Louysa's 
justification against all her calumnies.' 

The years just preceding 1660, were times of trial 
for the poor ex-Queen, who found herself in sore 
straits and without much hope of better times. The 
battle of Worcester was a very real fact ; the Restora- 
tion was very uncertain. The Stuarts were much 
dispersed over Europe. Rupert and Maurice were 
pursuing their adventurous careers as corsairs ; and 
she was soon to lose Maurice, who was drowned at 
sea. Elizabeth's debts increased ; and creditors be- 
came pressing. She was too poor to visit Rhenen. 
Widowed, childless, friendless (but for Craven), and 
hopeless, her last years before the Restoration must 
have been, even to her, sorrowful and lonely. 

But the Restoration came, and her nephew sat upon 
the throne of Great Britain. Elizabeth desired at 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 67 

once to return to her native land, but Charles II. 
urged her not to think of coming to England. His 
comprehensive tenderness for women did not include 
any fondness for an aged aunt, impecunious, unfortu- 
tunate, importunate. The money that he wanted to 
spend upon the female sex was required for Mrs 
Palmer and others of that sort. But Elizabeth was 
not to be deterred. She had determined to return 
to England, and on May 17, 1661, she landed at 
Margate, and travelled on to London. Her arrival 
was little noticed. Her old friends were all gone, 
and her popularity had vanished also. She had out- 
lived the contemporaries of her youth, and a genera- 
tion had arisen that knew her not. She was slightly 
regarded, with an indolent curiosity, as the titular 
Queen of a remote country, which was all but unknown 
to Whitehall. 

The England to which she returned was for Eliza- 
beth a changed England. Between her youth and her 
age stood the great shadow of the Protectorate, and 
the mighty image of Cromwell separated her brother 
and her nephew. Craven alone remained ever tender, 
ever true. She lived in Drury House, Drury Lane. 
From that mansion she moved to Leicester House, 
Leicester Square, and there, five days after her re- 
moval to the new dwelling, on February 13, 1662, 
Elizabeth Stuart, Dowager-Electress Palatine and 
titular Queen of Bohemia, died. 

German literature contains very many works of 



1 68 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

authority and research about the great Thirty Years" 
War, but no one historian has set his mark upon the 
subject. Germany separates in such matters more 
carefully than we do. She keeps poet and historian 
as things apart ; we mix the two qualities and 
functions. 

The great historian, resembling in that respect 
the poet or the dramatist, must, when depicting a 
personage, create a character. The hints of history 
are the equivalents of the suggestions of imagina- 
tion. The historian must see clearly both outside 
and inside the person that he would portray, and 
must combine into an art-whole the complete por- 
traiture, round and finished, of the hero or heroine 
of history. This task is the duty of every true his- 
torian, but it can, necessarily, be discharged but by 
few, since, to fulfil it satisfactorily, requires qualities 
which nearly rival those of the poet or creator. 
Carlyle is the one man in the domain of history 
who, through many absolute creations, really fulfils 
the ideal requirement ; but yet another instance may 
be cited in Froude's picture of Mary Queen of Scots. 
In its higher aspects, history needs an imagination 
only just below that required by a great poet. 

To piece out the imperfections of evidence ; to 
read, by insight, the motives of action and the 
depths of character ; to feel, by instinct, the passions 
that once fired a man or woman, long since dead, 
and but imperfectly depicted by the chronicler — 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OE BOHEMIA. 169 

these are difficulties which can only be overcome by 
a man of high and penetrating imagination, who pos- 
sesses also a judicial power of criticism. It is given 
but to a few to realise, with any objective force, the 
body, form, and presence ; the true and living images 
of human beings that once existed ; of times that are 
past. The great historian must possess a touch, at 
least, of the poet ; and we, in England, have been 
most successful in developing this ideal historian. 

Elizabeth can never have been beautiful. Pepys, 
who may be credited with some critical judgment of 
female charms, saw her in Holland when he went 
with his patron to bring over Charles II., and records 
of the Queen of Bohemia, that ■ she seems a very 
debonair, but a plain lady.' Mr Pepys hits the mark. 
Her pleasant, lively manner would last into her age, 
and the loss of youth would only render the fact 
plainer. Four portraits of her are known to me. 
The one by Hoilthorst, in the ■ National Portrait 
Gallery, is a performance of little mark or likelihood. 
There are two at Hampton Court; one (No. 128) is 
a full length, also by Honthorst, in which she is de- 
picted in a dark dress with a large ruff ; the hair red, 
the face rather pointedly oval, with an expression of 
some shrewishness, caused, apparently, by sorrow. 
The mouth is thin and tightly compressed, and the 
expression is scarcely loveable. The other Hampton 
Court work (No. 765) is by Derick, a good painting, 
badly hung, and the youngest portrait of Elizabeth 



170 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

that is extant. The face is round, like that of James 
in youth, and the expression is happy. It is the 
Princess Elizabeth, with all life opening in hope, 
when the young Count Palatine has crossed the sea 
to woo her for his bride. Honthorst was teacher of 
painting tQ the Princess Louisa. 

To the Royal Academy we owe those recent exhi- 
bitions of the works of the ' Old Masters,' which 
are the delight alike of the art critic and of the his- 
torical student. In the winter exhibition of 1880 
appeared a portrait of Elizabeth (No. 127) by Miere- 
velt, which belongs to the highest class of portrait 
art, and which is the best existing portrait of the 
Queen of Bohemia. It was painted in Holland, and 
represents Elizabeth at about the middle of her career. 
Beneath the veneer of femininity we recognise the 
ignoble features of James. The modelling of every 
feature resembles that of her father's face. He had 
very protruding eyes ; they are seen, softened, in this 
portrait. The aspect is serious ; the face is painted 
in repose, but is full of character, and the spectator 
feels that he stands in the presence of the true 
Elizabeth. Her hair is red, and the complexion is 
opaquely white. The lips are ugly, thin, and are 
closely compressed. The forehead is poor and nar- 
row. Obstinacy, rather than firmness, is expressed. 
The shape of the face is oval, with a somewhat 
pointed chin. The dress is a study of a royal cos- 
tume of the period. The portrait is full length, and 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 171 

gives the physiognomy of the whole figure. The 
bearing is that of a woman accustomed to play the 
Queen ; the hands are fine ; and the totality of the 
being expressed agrees fully with all that we know, 
or can divine, of the superficial, though amiable 
character of the pleasure-loving but unfortunate 
daughter of the House of Stuart. This portrait is 
quite admirable and masterly. The face, in its still 
gravity, is not altogether loveable or attractive. You 
retain an impression of shrewdness and vivacity, 
coupled with a mean intellect, and with a calculat- 
ing heart. 

Elizabeth and Frederick were light, trivial char- 
acters, and were, it must be admitted, somewhat 
shallow weaklings ; but the romance of history may 
still regard with a certain tender interest their lives, 
their loves, and their misfortunes. Behind and around 
their careers stands the great portent of the Thirty 
Years' War, with all its crowd of historical figures, 
with all the turmoil of its important events. 

To the general public in England, the Bohemian 
royal couple have subsided almost into mere names, 
vaguely realised through the mists of a by-flown 
time. They were set to sink or swim in a period, 
and among conflicting powers, that were too terrible 
and too powerful for their small idiosyncrasies. Hence, 
in part, the pathos of their story. In India, in the 
country in which deadly snakes do most abound, the 
natives walk about with bare legs ; and Frederick and 



172 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Elizabeth had no armour that saved them from being 
easily bitten by the poison of ambition and the venom 
of vanity. Aggression, to be successful, must be* 
backed by mental power and by warrior prowess — 
they had neither. Ambition should be made of 
sterner stuff than that of which they were composed- 
Vanity impelled them into ambition, impotence- 
reduced them to misfortune ; but they bitterly ex- 
piated their faults, and their miscalculation of their 
own means or of the help of others. 

James, owing to weak legs, had to lean upon the 
shoulders of men ; Frederick and Elizabeth, owing ta 
their want of mental and physical force for great 
enterprises, were compelled to depend upon the help 
of others, and they leant upon broken reeds — as on 
the German Protestant Princes, the Union, James^ 
and Charles. Heavy losses and serious sorrows 
punished their errors and their deficient judgment ' r 
but neither duplicity nor treachery, even in such a 
distracted and immoral day, can be charged against 
them, nor can they be accused of cruelty or found 
guilty of tyranny. The impression that they leave,, 
if thin, is pure. His nature, if weak, was tender; her 
character, though shallow, was clear. They were 
nobly steadfast in the faith, and they resisted the 
temptations of interest to deny their religion. 

Frederick was, at least, a gallant, gentle, and ac- 
complished carpet-knight. Elizabeth was graceful 
and gracious as Princess and as Queen. Their con- 



ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. 1 73 

jugal fidelity and true attachment render them models, 
.as royal married lovers, in their dissolute century. 
They had vanity without ability, ambition without 
success. Their capacity, though but small, was equal 
to that of Ferdinand ; was certainly superior to that 
of Philip II. Circumstance made the difference of 
success, and caused the revolution of their wheel of 
fortune. For many reasons I have thought it good 
to try to snatch them from a submerging oblivion, 
and to place on record a brief, if imperfect, picture of 
that English Princess who was once Queen of Hearts 
and Queen of Bohemia. 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 

Heisa aufgeschaut ! 

Wem graut vor Strauss', 

Der bleuV zu Haus ; 

Eppela-Gaila zieht zu vierzehnt aus, 

Eppela-Gaila von Dramaus ! — Old Ballad. 

HPHE scene of our present sketch is laid in Ger- 
many ; the action of our romantic drama — 
which is based partly on living legend, partly on the 
records of old chronicles and archives — plays it- 
self chiefly in and around Niirnberg. The date is the 
fourteenth century. 

The state of Germany in that age was anarchic, 
chaotic. The Church, the Kaisers, the Fiirsten, nay, 
even the Imperial Free Cities — whereof there were 
then some hundred and six — were all, in a rage of 
strain and storm, struggling together, each force 
opposed to the other in a wild welter of disordered 
conflict. Out of the collision of these warring ele- 
ments was pressed into life the order of RaubiHtter, or 
Robber-Knights : men of birth who elected to live, 
in a lawless age, by saddle and by sword ; who 
sought gain by masterful spoliation, and strove for 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 175 

glory by despiteful deeds of arms. The Ranbritter 
was a natural product of his land and time. The 
younger and wilder nobles pressed into the career — 
for such it then was — with joyous eagerness, and 
without much sense of shame or wrong. They 
may almost be called crusaders of crime ; and indeed 
they very often sublimated their wild life with a strain 
of knightly daring and warrior enterprise. Many of 
them were, naturally, mere coarse common robbers, 
greedy and cruel ; but there were some who sur- 
rounded the perilous avocation with chivalry, and 
ennobled it with romance. That one of the Ran- 
britter, who is the best type of the nobler sort — 
Eppelein von Gailingen — forms the subject of the 
present narrative. 

England has her Robin Hood, Scotland her Rob 
Roy, and Germany her Eppelein. The last named, 
too, is still a name and a fame. I was the other day 
in his Franconian country, and found his memory 
still very full of life. At Niirnberg they show you the 
site of his famous leap for life, though the city wall is 
now much higher than it was in Eppelein's olden 
day ; in Rothenburg on the Tauber his name is 
still a household word, while at Muggendorf, in the 
fair Franconian Switzerland, they point out to you 
the ruins of Eppelein's ancient castle. You can hear 
from peasants an account of some of his many ex- 
ploits ; and the reputation of Eppelein remains a 
popular romance. 



176 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Herr Franz Trautmarm has brought together, out 
of ballad, legend, and chronicle, a pleasant volume 
which presents some picture of its hero ; and to Herr 
Trautmann and his book I owe acknowledgment and 
thanks. 

Eppelein von Gailingen was no mere robber. If 
he had been only that, the popular interest in him 
would not survive as it does. 

You see in Germany many a ghostly ruin of an 
olden castle which still retains feeble hold of a name 
of its own, but enshrines no memory of a now for- 
gotten owner. The rough robber is forgotten so soon 
as the life is beneficently knocked out of him ; but 
the mixed characters of men like Robin Hood or 
Eppelein live yet in story and in song. 

It is difficult for us to realise the actual, tangible 
law of might which ruled in the fourteenth century ; 
a might which had to be encountered or died under ; 
and yet we must try to conceive this sway of force if 
we would understand the Middle Ages and the 
robber-knight. The ' Kings of the Romans/ the 
Emperors, were far too busy with their own concerns 
to think of protecting the life or property of the 
trader travelling on the highway ; indeed, some 
Kaisers — such ones as Ludwig the Baier, Karl IV., 
GiAnther von Schwarzburg — were really Raubritters 
on an imperial scale. It is clear that Eppelein did 
not think his profession any disgrace. He was indig- 
nant at the misdeeds of Church and State, of Kaiser 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 1 77 

and of Pope. He always held himself to be an 
' honourable knight;' he never broke his knightly 
word ; he was furious against the ' slanderous 
tongues ' that called his followers * Staudenhechte ' 
and 'Schnapphahne' — * pikes-in-the-w r eed,' or c snatch- 
cocks.' 

Bravest among the brave, he had a wisdom that 
could guide his valour to act in safety ; he was 
capable of courtesy, generosity, chivalry ; he w r as 
always gentle to women ; he had a keen wit and a 
humorous power of strong sarcasm. There was also 
' the grace and versatility of the man.' He loved 
adventure, and courted danger for its own fierce sake. 

Had Eppelein found an honourable career in noble 
wars, or in national politics, his singular qualities and 
his distinguished prowess would have won for him a 
royal name ; but his times were against him, and they 
drove him to become— the thing that he was. 

Thus much premised, I pass on to show you some- 
thing of our tarnished hero as he lived and died. I 
shall try to place before you some vital picture of the 
best and greatest of the Raubritter. His own deeds 
— and misdeeds — will depict Eppelein best. 

Early in the fourteenth century, the good knight 
Arnold von Gailingen was lord of the Castles of 
Illesheim near Windsheim, of Wald near Gunzen- 
hausen, of Trameysl (or Dramaus) near Muggendorf, 
and of Gailingen, his Stammschloss, which latter was 
situated near Rothenburg on the Tauber. His wife 

M 



178 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

was named Apollonia, and he had two sons, one of 
whom was a monk at Wiirzburg, while the other pur- 
sued the Kriegshandel, or trade of war, in far lands. 
The soldier-son, following his trade of war, procured 
himself to be effectually killed in some one of those 
far lands ; so that Arnold's two first-born sons did 
not yield him an heir to his name, his honours, and 
his castles. Out of this dilemma he was helped by 
woman's wit, when, in or about the year 13 11, the 
Frau Apollonia proposed to make her husband once 
more a father. ' If/ said the good lady, ' my coming 
child be a girl, it shall be a nun ; if a boy, he shall be 
a monk.' Father Isidorus, the resident castle chap- 
lain, warmly approved the pious resolution ; and 
Arnold, his wife being weak, did not dissent. In 
deep winter, in the Castle of Illesheim, Apollonia was 
safely delivered of a son. They called his name 
Apollonius, which means, being interpreted, Eppelein ; 
and this infant became Eppelein of Gailingen and his 
father's heir. The mother had a bad time, and the 
infant was, at first, to all appearance, rather weakly. 
' He will make .a good monk/ they thought ; but 
when they said this in the child's hearing, he (as 
chronicles record) raised a great cry, kicked and 
threatened as if he were angry at the very idea of 
becoming a monk. When Eppelein was christened, 
he, so soon as he felt the touch of water, uplifted a 
terrible shout that frightened all that heard it ; he 
nearly upset the christening vessel, and behaved so 



EPPELEIN VON GA1LINGEN. 179 

violently that all were astonished. In this line of 
conduct, however, Eppelein resembled the infant who 
afterwards became the Emperor Wenzel, and who, 
when baptised in the St Sebaldus Church in Niirn- 
berg, comported himself in the like uproarious 
manner. Arnold remarked, as he watched his child's 
behaviour, 'I should almost doubt whether this boy 
will ever make a monk/ The little Eppelein soon 
ripened into a strong and sturdy boy. When he was 
about six years old, his great delight was to take 
down from the wall his father's sword, and to swing 
it about. He tried to draw on his father's heavy 
riding-boots and spurs ; and when Arnold rode out 
on ' Black Adam,' the boy insisted upon riding in 
front of his father on the great war-horse. At ten,. 
Eppelein could ride ' Black Adam ' almost better 
than his father. The boy never knew fear. He 
would catch wild, unbroken colts by the mane, swing 
himself on to them, and gallop furiously round the 
meadows ; nor could the fiercest horse ever throw the 
boy. He sat as if he had been molten on to a horse. 
Arnold did not wish to pain his wife, and therefore 
held his tongue before her, but he was often heard to 
mutter, as he watched Eppelein, ; They will never 
make a monk of that boy.' Himself an old 
Haudegen, the knight had a secret joy in his son's 
strength and daring and unruliness. 

Frau Apollonia was a weak and pious woman. 
Given such a lady of it, and the castle is like to be 



ISO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

ruled by a priest ; as indeed was the case with all 
Arnold's many castles, in which the Father Isidorus,, 
while maintaining a decent show of respect for the 
good knight, was practically almost supreme. The 
education and control of the young Eppelein were 
confided to the priest, but without good results. 
Eppelein soon detected that the Father was selfish and 
a hypocrite ; and the boy rose in revolt against the 
priestly rule. Eppelein would obey only Arnold,, 
who seldom interfered between priest and scholar ; 
but, with a smile, let them fight it out between them, 
though Isidorus was always complaining of the boy, 
and urging Arnold to punish him. The quarrels 
between Isidorus and Eppelein became fierce and 
frequent ; and the lad played his reverend tutor many 
evil tricks. One day, after some mischievous prank y 
the incensed father, after calling Eppelein a ' heilloser 
Gesell/ pulled the boy's ears, receiving in return a 
blow which nearly knocked him down. * How can 
you honour my father and mother/ asked Eppelein, 
' when you take their son by the ears ? ' 'A pretty 
monk you'll make ! ' roared the enraged chaplain. 
Eppelein, who generalised too rapidly, conceived an 
unhappy dislike to the whole body of the clergy. If 
monks or priests were coming to the castle, he took 
away the plank or tree by which they had to cross 
the river ; when they reached the courtyard, he let 
loose all the great dogs of the castle, and fastened all 
the doors. Twice, when Isidorus went to the cellar, 



EPPELEIN VOX GAILINGEN. l8l 

for purposes no doubt innocent in themselves and 
certainly conducive to his comfort, Eppelein locked 
him in, and the father could only get let out by 
frantic knockings and callings. On another occa- 
sion the boy glued together the leaves of the Father's 
breviary. Isidorus did not find out this trick for 
some days, and the boy pointed out that the priest 
must have neglected his duties for at least that period. 

Arnold and Apollonia were induced to scold 
Eppelein, who, in consequence, resolved to be further 
revenged upon Isidorus, and accomplished his pur- 
pose in this wise. 

Eppelein began by upbraiding the father for setting 
his parents against him. 

' Verrucht'er Gesell ! ' shouted the angry priest ; 
* if I did not know you to be the son of your pious 
mother, I should hold you to be an imp of Satan ! ' 

* Ah ! ' returned Eppelein, ' you abuse my mother, 
do you ? Very well, you shall pay for that. I have 
a mind to line your cap with pitch — ' 

1 I'll take care,' roared the father, c that you shall 
have no chance. You sha'n't get my cap into your 
mischievous hands. See, I'll put it on at once.' 

And he hastily did so. But Eppelein had been 
beforehand with him, and the cap was already lined 
with pitch. Isidorus could put it on, but he could not 
get it off again. He roared for help, and they tried 
to pull off the cap, but it stuck fast, and the Father's 
howls were so piteous that they had to leave it where 



1 82 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

it was ; and, indeed, it remained there for many a 
long day. Isidorus carried his woes to the Lady 
Apollonia, and she urged her husband to interfere, 
Arnold was really angry ; he had just put his foot 
into the stirrup of ' Black Adam,' but he turned back, 
moved by his wife's tears, and called to a Knecht to 
bring a stick. Eppelein wrenched the stick out of 
the man's hand, ran downstairs, sprang upon ' Black 
Adam,' and rode away. He was then twelve or thir- 
teen years old. When he reached the great wood 
near Trameysl, he dismounted, and began (for he was 
a boy still) to pick and eat bilberries. ' Black Adam/ 
who was like a dog with Eppelein, waited by and 
grazed contentedly. 

Presently Eppelein heard voices, and creeping 
through the brushwood, he saw a large band of 
riders, headed by his father's chiefest enemy. He 
listened, and found that they were lying in wait for 
his father, intending to kill Arnold, and then to seize 
his castle. Noiselessly did Eppelein return to his 
noble horse. He led ' Black Adam ' over the sand, 
in order that the horse's hoofs might make no noise ; 
then he remounted, and rode swiftly back. On his 
road he met Arnold, mounted upon the chesnut, and 
told him all. 

Now, when Isidorus saw father and son ride into 
the courtyard, the good man's heart swelled with joy, 
for he thought that Eppelein had been caught, and 
was brought home for condign punishment. How- 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 183 

ever, it was another matter that had brought the pair 
home, though Isidorus did not yet know it, 

' Gottvergessener Gauch ! ' he cried out to Eppelein. 
' Now you shall learn what it is to maltreat a holy 
man ! You shall be locked up for days ; you shall be — ' 

' Silence ! ' cried Arnold, who had to think of more 
serious matters. 'There is other game afoot ! ' and 
it was boot and saddle in the castleyard, where all 
the riders were soon mounting, under arms, while the 
castle prepared for a defence. 

Eppelein suggested that a Knecht should be sent 
out, disguised as a peasant, should let himself be 
caught by the enemy, and should then tell them that 
Arnold was away from Trameysl, and would not 
come home for many days. 

This was done. Arnold's foes were overjoyed. 
They postponed their attack until evening, and de- 
tained the sullen peasant to lead them in the dark to 
the castle, which he unwillingly did. 

Things did not, however, fall out quite as they had 
expected. Just as they reached Trameysl, Arnold, 
Eppelein, and all the riders fell upon them from' 
behind, and , defeated the foe with such slaughter 
that only five remained alive. 

This was Eppelein's first knightly deed of arms, but 
he did well and worshipfully, himself unhorsing and 
wounding two Lanzknechts. When the fight was 
over, said Arnold, as he wiped his sword on the 
mane of Black Adam — and he said it proudly too, — 



1 84 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

* That boy will never be a monk ! ' 

Some ten years rolled on, and Eppelein developed 
rapidly. He could keep his own counsel, and carry 
out his own will. He was feared and liked by the 
soldiers and the tenants. All said, ' The lad has as 
much character as courage, and will come to be a 
puissant knight ; but a monk — never ! ' One day his 
father Arnold died ; and shortly after, Frau Apollonia 
prepared to follow her husband. Es fehlte ihr im 
Magen und im Kopfe— she suffered in the head and 
in the stomach — and the simple leechcraft of Isidorus 
could not avail. He mixed, and administered to the 
good lady, all the draughts that he knew of ; but even 
this treatment did not help, and Apollonia died. 

So Eppelein became lord, and this was his first act 
of mastery. He sent for Isidorus, and said, — 

' You have caused me many a bitter hour ; you set 
enmity between my parents and me ; and more than 
all ' (here Eppelein's anger rose high) ' you would 
have made a monk of me. All is ended between us. 
I am now master here, and you shall not remain an- 
other hour in my halls. Go ! ' 

Now you may think that this was not pleasant 
for Isidorus, who, as priest and protege of the lady 
of so many castles, had for long years borne sway 
and influence, had had an easy life, with free run of 
cellar and buttery, and who saw himself turned out 
by the young lord, and relegated to meagre fare and 
to some sort of work. So he pleaded, and offered 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 1 85 

to pray for Eppelein, who, however, remained in- 
exorable. Then Isidorus, who was of a heavenly 
temper, gave way to it, and emitted an impromptu 
commination service, brief but intense, which con- 
tained prophecies of evil and malignant denunciations. 
This, also, did not help, and the discomfited priest 
left the halls of the young Knight of Gailingen. 

Eppelein's next step was this. He sent out his 
trumpeters to all the castles round about to invite 
the knights and Junkers to a great banquet. Some 
stayed away ; but the noble, swelling spirits, the 
young and wild springalds of nobility all came, and 
were royally entertained by Eppelein at Trameysl. 

Eppelein's position was this : — He was young, 
strong, proud, brave, eager for adventure, desirous 
of glory. He had a hearty hatred of priests and 
Jews; he loathed hypocrisy ; he had a knightly scorn 
of traders, of usurers, of money-changers ; and he 
held in contempt Biirgermeisters and town councils. 
Hence he determined to live by the saddle and the 
sword, i.e., to become a Raubritter, or robber-knight. 
An Eppelein had not much of a career open to him 
in Eppelein's land and time. Of the sea he could 
know nothing. In the distracted anarchic condition 
of Germany there were no political causes that could 
present a field for his energy and enterprise. He 
believed — or believed that he believed — that his pur- 
suit was not unworthy of a knight fired by love of 
glory, and he embraced it with a serious joy. There 



1 86 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

was, in Eppelein's complex nature, a strong love of 
romance, of daring for its own sake ; and he loved 
the right — as he understood the right. Among the 
wild spirits who came to Trameysl we find the names 
of Ruban von Neuerstein, Fritz von Gattendorf r 
Hans von Krahenheim, Gotz von Jachsberg, Albrecht 
der Eisenhut, Hermann von Nest, Kress von Peill- 
stein, the two Kammerers, Fritz der Walch, Ditmar 
von Roth, two Bachensteins, and the two von Bern- 
heimer. Last and worst, fiercest and fellest of all 
the company, was Wolf von Wurmstein, already 
known as ' The Wild Wolf ; ' and these reckless young 
nobles formed themselves into a band of knightly 
robbers, with Eppelein von Gailingen as their chief. 
They were strong enough to set the cities at defiance ;. 
and they had no imperial opposition to fear. 

The new band soon made itself felt and known. 
No highway in Franconia could be travelled in safety,- 
nor did it 'help that the traders engaged escorts of 
mercenaries. When a merchant rode out of any city 
gate, the mob chanted — 

Komm g'sund nach Haus, 

Der Niirnberger Feind reit' aus, 

Eppela-Gaila von Dramaus. 

It soon appeared that the free Imperial city of 
Niirnberg was the object of Eppelein's peculiar de- 
testation. It was full of priests, Jews, traders, usurers r 
town councillors — the people that most he hated — 
and the city was very rich. What woe he wrought 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 1 87 

to Niirnberg, what scoffs and mocks he put upon it, 
we shall soon see. Above all his contemporaries of 
the sword, Eppelein soon made himself a distinctive 
name in the land. His daring, craft, generosity, ro- 
mance, became the theme of general talk and popular 
rumour. Hated by the classes that he hated, Eppelein 
was well loved of the common people. Never did 
he any harm or wrong to poor or simple folk ; indeed, 
he often did good to them. 

Now, of Eppelein's many exploits I can only relate 
a very few. It would need a book, and not a mere 
article, to tell you all the wild, daring deeds of this 
fearless Raubritter of the fourteenth century. Eppe- 
lein had, as I think you will soon see, a strain of fierce, 
practical humour, as of misdirected chivalry, in the 
ardent nature driven by disjointed times to such a 
lawless life. If ' ower bad for blessing,' he was, at 
times, certainly ' ower good for banning.' He never 
broke his knightly word ; he conceived that he was 
doing wild right and rough justice; he often helped 
true love ; he was not murderous or cruel, even to 
prisoners; and though fell in fight, he killed only 
in hot blood First, I will tell you of a pleasant 
adventure. Es ist zu wtssen, as the quaint old 
chronicles say, that there was then in Niirnberg a 
very wealthy burgher, Tetzel by name, who had one 
fair daughter that he loved passing well. Agnes was 
proud of her beauty and her wealth, scorned all her 
suitors, and declared that she would only marry a 



1 88 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

nobleman. Thereupon Eppelein wrote to the Rath 
offering through them to Agnes his ' ritterlich hoch- 
steigene Hand/ He added that if Agnes should 
marry any Nurnberger he should levy a fine of 8000. 
gold gulden upon the city, and would, moreover, have 
a kiss from the bride. Niirnberg answered angrily, 
but feared to let Agnes marry anyone. When her 
father had wished her to marry, Agnes would not ; 
but when he wished her not to marry, the wilful 
beauty decided to marry, and proceeded to fix her 
affections strongly upon one Ulrich Mendel, a proper 
young fellow, though scarcely quite attaining to 
Agnes's original standard of nobility. However, 
from dread of Eppelein, the marriage of Agnes and 
Ulrich was postponed. Suddenly the news came 
to Niirnberg that Eppelein was sick unto death. He 
sent to the city for Doctor Rehm, the great physician, 
to whom Eppelein promised a large fee and a safe 
conduct. The Rath gladly sent the doctor to 
Trameysl, but intimated to Rehm, before he started, 
that he need not go out of his way to cure Eppelein. 

Dr Rehm found his patient very weak and very 
red in the face. This latter symptom, however, 
Eppelein had brought about by taking a mighty 
draught of strong wine. The doctor felt the sick 
man's pulse, shook his head, and said : ' You have 
the burning fever, and will probably die. You must 
repent of all your sins and prepare for death. Still 
I will see what I can do ; ' and he prepared a draught 



EPPELEIN VOX GAILINGEN. 1 89 

for the sick man. ' Drink, Eppelein ! ' said Dr Rehm. 
' Rascal ! ' cried the patient, springing out of bed • 
'do you think I don't know what you mean? How 
little you know ! I am quite well. You shall drink 
that draught yourself ; if it be poison, you will be served 
right ; if it be harmless it will do you no harm ! ' 

No help for it The doctor made a wry face, but 
he drank. Then it occurred to Eppelein to make 
further experiments in medicine, and he mixed all 
Rehm's drugs into one draught, and made the doctor 
drink that. This nearly finished the wretched phy- 
sician, who was removed in a very uncomfortable 
condition. 

As Rehm had been sent to him, the news of 
Eppelein's death was easily believed. A black flag 
floated over the castle, and traders began to crawl 
out of Niirnberg. Tetzel and Menzel sent away a 
large cargo of valuable goods, but the caravan was 
waylaid, and a person, recognised by his comrades as 
the dead Eppelein, said gaily, ' We have the 8000 
gulden and more ; now I go for my kiss. Hide about 
here and wait my return, in case I should bring friends 
from Niirnberg with me.' 

The wedding feast of Agnes and of Ulrich was 
merry and was splendid. Ulrich said it was a double 
festival, and celebrated both his marriage and Eppe- 
lein's death. ' Do not be too sure of that,' said a 
venerable old man among the guests. ' I hear that 
Eppelein has been seen again/ 



1 90 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Now the bride, who was curious and anxious, went 
to the venerable old man to inquire further, when 
suddenly, to her surprise, she was passionately 
embraced and heartily kissed. Off went white wig 
and beard, and the rest of the disguise ; out flamed a 
bright, keen sword, and the guest, no longer old, 
cried : ' I have had my money, I have had my kiss ! 
I am Eppelein ! After me who lists to follow.' He 
sprang upon his horse, and rode thundering over the 
bridge at the Frauentlior. Then there was mounting 
in hot haste, and the enraged Ulrich and the Niirn- 
bergers rode, as they might, after the bride-kisser. 
Eppelein kept ahead, but did not ride so fast as usual. 
Presently he whistled, and from copse and shaw came 
forth the Wolf and the riders of Dramaus. Eppelein 
tied Ulrich to his horse, gave him in charge to two 
Knechts, and said : ' Sir Bridegroom, we shall soon 
meet at Trameysl. I always keep my word. You 
will know Eppelein again ! ' Then Eppelein returned 
to the joy of fierce fight The Niirnbergers retired 
sorely discomfited, but Ulrich remained Eppelein's 
prisoner. 

The next day Eppelein wrote, as he always did, 
in stately and ceremonious fashion, to the Rath of 
the praiseworthy free city of Ntirnberg. He said two 
friends of theirs, Dr Rehm and Ulrich Mendel, were 
on a visit to him ; but, though the air at Dramaus 
was good, both seemed rather to pine for Ntirnberg, 
and would gladly return home, which they could do 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 191 

so soon as the praiseworthy free city aforesaid should 
have paid for them a little ransom of 4000 gold 
gulden. This ransom Niirnberg paid forthwith, and 
recovered her citizens ; but Eppelein had his kiss, his 
glory, and his gain. 

It is to be noticed that neither Dr Rehm nor Ulrich 
had been at all ill-treated while they were prisoners ; 
though the doctor had — perhaps deservedly — been 
subjected at first to some rather tempestuous play- 
fulness. 

And now you shall hear the story of Eppelein's 
great leap for life ; a leap such as, perhaps, no other 
horse and rider ever took. 

There was a certain Jew in Niirnberg, called Elias, 
who, like Isaac of York, dealt, among other things, 
in armour and in horses. Now this Jew had for sale 
a certain matchless horse, said to be the best in all 
Germany ; but there was one objection to the peerless 
grey — that is, he was so wild and fierce that no man 
could mount and ride him. The Burggraf wanted 
the horse, and Eppelein, you may be sure, who could 
ride any horse, wanted such an one sorely. 

Elias sold the horse to the Burggraf for twenty 
gold gulden, but when Eppelein made offers for the 
steed, a plan of treachery occurred to the cunning 
Jew, and he offered, for 2000 gulden, to deliver 
Eppelein into the hands of the Niirnbergers. The 
Jew reasoned well, because Eppelein was so fond of 
a good horse, that he forgot his usual caution. So 



192 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Elias said he would bring the gallant grey to Forch- 
heim, that Eppelein might see the horse ; and Eppelein 
went there eagerly aud unattended. At Forchheim, 
Eppelein did not find the horse, but he found an 
ambush of Niirnberg Lanzkneckts, who succeeded in 
seizing Eppelein, and in carrying the great Rau- 
britter, securely bound, into Niirnberg ; that is, to 
certain death. He was borne into the city on the 
shoulders of the spearmen, and the mob, which had 
always pictured Eppelein as a kind of terrible devil, 
was surprised to see a handsome cavalier, gay, 
confident, bold. Eppelein knew his danger well ; 
but he kept his wits about him, looked round him 
(specially at the city walls), and maintained a cheer- 
ful debonair demeanour. 

Eppelein was taken before the Burggraf, who, with 
Biirgermeister, Rath, patricians, soldiers, and much 
people about him, sat on horseback in the great wide 
Schlossplatz, or open ground below the Burg of 
Niirnberg. 

' Eppelein of Gailingen,' said the Burggraf sternly, 
' we have caught you at last ; and for your many mis- 
deeds you must prepare to die the death ! ' 

' Burggraf,' replied Eppelein gaily, ' I love life as well 
as any man, and I don't think that I shall die to-day/ 

Then Elias, the Jew, stood forward. With spite- 
ful glee and deep malice, he told the story of his 
treachery ; he claimed the 2000 gulden and the 
payment for his horse. 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 1 93 

* Burggraf,' said Eppelein, ' may I see this horse 
before I die? I am accounted a good rider, as you 
know, and it may chance that I could tame a horse 
that none other can ride ! ' 

' Agreed ! ' cried the Burggraf. ' And you, Eppelein, 
shall decide whether I am to pay this Jew for a devil's 
horse that no man can ride. Bring forth the horse ! ' 

And the horse was brought, snorting, and stamping, 
and foaming, into the open space. Several grooms 
led him, and they were all afraid of him. 

Eppelein looked at the grey with a born horseman's 
joy. Never had he seen such force and fire ; such 
spirit, strength, and speed ; and then the creature 
was so beautiful ! * The very horse for me ! ' thought 
Eppelein, * and I will have him, too ! ' 

' Mount, if thou darest, Eppelein ! ' said the Burg- 
graf. ' Unbind him, Kuechts, and lead him to the 
horse ! ' 

And then they saw a marvellous thing. Eppelein 
showed no fear ; he patted and stroked the horse, 
which seemed to know his master, and suffered 
Eppelein to approach and touch him. In a moment 
Eppelein had hold of bridle and of mane, and with 
one vault, he sat firmly in the saddle. The horse 
neighed, and plunged, and kicked, but Eppelein sat 
as if the two had been moulded in one casting. Erect 
and fair, the cavalier kept his seat ; and the w r ild 
horse, leaping high into the air, in furious bounds, 
flew round and round in circles, which Eppelein took 

N 



194 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

care to widen. The people drew back, and suddenly 
Eppelein, seeing the way clear, headed the horse for 
the city wall, struck him with the spurs, and at one 
wild leap cleared wall and moat, and stood safe out- 
side Niirnberg ! 

The Burggraf could not restrain his admiration ; 
but the astonished soldiers soon rushed to the wall, 
threw spears and discharged cross-bows at the mock- 
ing horseman, who sat, laughing and jeering at them, 
on the horse that he alone could ride. * I can throw 
a spear better than you ! ' cried Eppelein, as he 
snatched one out of the ground and hurled it through 
the arm of the Jew Elias. * Burggraf, you need not 
pay for the horse. I alone can ride him ! And you 
need not pay the Jew for my capture, for I am not 
captured — I am Eppelein ! Ade ! ' 

And he turned and fled like the wind. Never had 
he felt such a horse beneath him. It was not long 
before he was safe in Dramaus ; having acquired a 
matchless horse that he alone could master and could 
use. 

And that wild horse became as celebrated through- 
out Franconia as was his yet wilder rider, Eppelein 
von Gailingen. 

But the traitor Jew came badly off. He was not 
paid for Eppelein, nor for the horse, but he was 
banished from Niirnberg on pain of death, and fell 
into the hands of Eppelein. 

' You have well deserved death at my hands ! ' said 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 195 

Eppelein, with a dark scowl, ' but fear not, Elias, I will 
be merciful. You shall have a safe conduct, and a ride 
into Niirnberg as my messenger. Bring out the wild 
boar ! ' 

And Eppelein wrote a letter to the Burggraf and 
tied it to Elias, and the Knechts tied Elias to the 
wild boar. They prodded the beast with their spears, 
and drove it towards Niirnberg ; and so, amid the 
fierce laughter of the wild followers of the Raubritter, 
Elias, who had caused Eppelein such a desperate ride, 
began an unpleasant ride on his own account. Arrived 
in the city, more dead than alive, Elias yet duly de- 
livered Eppelein's letter. The knight of Gailingen 
stipulated for the Jew's life, but added, that he had 
more generosity and was a better Christian than the 
Ntirnbergers were, for he had spared the life of a man 
who had sold his life for a price. The letter ended, 
1 You shall soon hear more from Eppelein.' 

The Rath was sorely perplexed at this threat, but 
they spared the life of Elias, and the Jew escaped 
safely to his own people, in Poland, Hungary, or 
Bohemia. And so Elias vanishes from this history, 
and the fame of Eppelein von Gailingen, and of his 
wonderful horse, waxed ever greater in the land. 

Love came to Eppelein, as it does to all men. He 
loved Kunigunde von Wurmstein, the sister of his 
friend ' The Wolf/ Kunigunde was of noble birth, 
was beautiful and high-hearted ; but at first she re- 
fused Eppelein, saying that his way of life was too 



iq6 studies in history, legend, etc. 

dangerous, that she should always be anxious, and 
might be left an untimely widow. All is fair in love, 
and Eppelein planned, without changing his way of 
life, to convince her of his reformation by extracting 
a marriage-gift from Nurnberg. He wrote his request 
to the Free City, but the reply was that Nurnberg 
would not give him a Spatz — a sparrow. He replied 
that if they would not give him a sparrow, he would 
take their singing-birds. He rode disguised into 
Niirnberg. entered the Treasury, put their portable 
gold cups and the like into a sack, which he shook 
and rattled ' to make the birds sing/ and rode safely 
off. When Kunigunde received her wedding present, 
she understood the whole thing, and she told Eppelein 
that if he had yielded to her request she would never 
have accepted him, that she loved his fame, and ad- 
mired his life of wild adventure. ' Henceforth/ said 
the lady, ' your friends are my friends, and your foes 
are my foes/ So they twain married, in great splen- 
dour, at Dramaus. They were well suited to each 
other, and lived very happily. Kunigunde died in a 
few years, leaving one son, Johannes, who promised 
to become a second Eppelein, but was killed in fight 
when quite young, falling with his face to the foe, and 
with all his wounds in front. 

The favourite horse did another great feat. Eppe- 
lein was in Nurnberg on some private business con- 
nected with a merry mock at the Rath, when, as he 
rode out, he was recognised. Seventy-two Lanz- 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 1 97 

KnecJits, under their captain, sat ready mounted in the 
market-place, and were sent in hot pursuit after 
Eppelein. Then there was galloping ! Eppelein 
rushed by the St Loreriz Church, and out of the 
Frauenthor, with the Niirnberg riders in full chase 
after him. Many a Niirnberg horse broke down and 
dropped out of the race, but Eppelein's grey flew as if 
he would never tire. Before Eppelein lay the Main, 
wide and swollen, in flood. He did not hesitate, but 
leaped the grey into the fierce current. Never heavier 
man and horse stemmed a swollen river's course ; but 
while the spearmen stood watching on the one bank, 
Eppelein reached the other bank safely, dismounted, 
lay down on his back, and mocked the baffled Niirn- 
bergers with many a merry jibe. Eppelein was so 
pleased with the noble horse to which he owed this 
escape that he had a gold bridle made for the steed, 
and washed its hoofs daily in wine. 

I could — but cannot for want of space — tell you 
many more exploits of this famous knight. I could 
tell you how he saved the life of Father Damian, w T ho, 
being accused of being ' too bold of tongue,' was to 
have been walled up alive in the Church of St Lorenz 
by the priests ; I could tell you how he confessed in the 
St Sebaldus Church ; I could tell you how he once 
actually preached at Niirnberg ; and how, after lashing 
the vices of the Niirnbergers, he concluded a powerful 
discourse by mentioning the fact that he was Eppelein. 
When he arrived at this point there arose a most 



198 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

unseemly disturbance in the congregation. Women 
screamed and crossed themselves, while the men, ris- 
ing up tumultuously, made as though they would have 
embraced their pastor. But Eppelein then disappeared 
suddenly ; and when his excited hearers sought to 
follow him, they found all doors locked ; and while 
they strove to obtain egress, they heard the rapid 
beat of a horse's hoofs dying away further and further 
into the distance, in the direction of the Frauenthor. 
It is, however, painful to have to contemplate such 
evidences of a want of proper reverence on the part 
of a hater of monks. Once Niirnberg, when Eppelein 
was away, turned out with all its force and tried to 
burn Trameysl. Eppelein returned in time,' though 
with but a small force, and beat back the Niirnbergers 
with great bloodshed. They had, however, burned 
down a part of the castle, and but for the peasants 
who loved * Eppa-Gaila,' would have wholly destroyed 
Dramaus. Eppelein threatened revenge, and he 
always kept his word. During a mighty tempest of 
great wind he set fire to Niirnberg, and burned down 
400 houses. It happened, in 1343, that Niirnberg 
was visited with the ' Black Death/ and with a 
terrible dearth and famine. The people were dying 
miserably of sickness and of starvation, so that it was 
piteous to sec and hear of. Now there was a certain 
usurer who had bought great stores of corn, which 
he held back that he might sell his stock at an 
enormous profit when the poor people should be 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEX. 1 99 

driven by hunger to pay any price. Had Eppelein 
known anything of political economy he would have 
recognised that such dealing was a natural and 
beautiful transaction ; but he was ignorant of the 
' dismal science,' and what he did was this : — First he 
himself warned the usurer, who denied having any 
corn, but when, a few days later, the usurer thought 
it safe to drive his corn to Niirnberg to market, 
Eppelein's riders seized the cargo and gave it away 
to the poor, starving people ; who, indeed, loved 
' Eppa-Gaila ' well — better than they loved Burggraf, 
or Biirgermeister, or Rath. He interfered once to 
make the course of true love run smooth. An old 
man, one Muffel, who was very rich, had got the 
consent of the parents of a pretty girl, and the mar- 
riage was being forced on. Now this girl loved, and 
was loved by, a nice young fellow, and Eppelein 
interfered to help the lovers. He so frightened old 
Muffel that the hunks gave up the girl, and the 
young lovers were happily married. 

Once when Eppelein was in Niirnberg, a rumour 
got abroad that he was in the city. All the gates 
were closed, and a mounted band was got ready in 
hot haste to pursue. While they were preparing, 
Eppelein went and took one of those peculiar baths 
which were then held to be good for the liver. As 
the riders went forth Eppelein rode with them, and 
when they got sufficiently far away, he turned to 
them and said, * Oh, you dullards ! Why don't you 



200 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

catch the poor soul ? The bath has done me good, 
and I am minded to gallop. Do you know him when 
you see him ? No ? Well, I am Eppelein ! ' and he 
turned and fled like the wind. '"They'll have fleet 
steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.' And 
the riders did not catch Eppelein, who arrived, laugh- 
ing, at Dramaus, after a healthy gallop, which, no 
doubt, assisted the action of the bath. 

When the troubles in Niirnberg were at their 
height, the poor people, maddened by misery and wast- 
ing with sickness, got hold of the idea that the Jews 
had poisoned the wells, and then began a cruel per- 
secution of the unhappy Israelites. Eppelein, I grieve 
to say, inflamed popular passions against his old 
enemies the Jews, and he is partly to be blamed for 
the ill-treatment to which they were subjected. One 
day, riding near the city, Eppelein saw an unhappy 
Jew, one Jacklein, followed by some citizens who 
wished to ill-use, or perhaps kill the Hebrew. Moved 
by some impulse of pity, Eppelein interfered. ■ Now 
that I have saved you, what will you do?' asked 
Eppelein, and Jacklein begged frantically to be 
allowed to enter into the knight's service, and to live 
and die there. Something in the man's manner 
touched Eppelein, who trusted in the Jew and granted 
his request. Jacklein was found astute and active ; 
he was always eager and bitter whenever anything 
was to be done to injure or insult Niirnberg. 

Ah ! there is so much to tell — and yet I must leave 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 201 

so much untold. It is pain and grief to me to have 
to pass over so many things in silence ; but I must 
just tell you of the meeting between the Kaiser and 
Eppelein. 

On the occasion of the Burggraf s marriage, Karl 
IV. honoured the nuptials with his presence, and there 
were great feastings, and mummings, and maskings, 
and Eppelein, you may be sure, in good disguise, was 
one of the gayest there. He rode in the cavalcade, 
and rode so well, ' witching the world with noble 
horsemanship,' that people cried, * Why, that cavalier 
rides like Eppelein ! ' And the bride said to him, 
4 How I should like, to see that brave Eppelein ! ■ and 
he replied, ( Fair lady, you shall see Eppelein, that I 
promise you. But you may see him and yet not 
know that it is Eppelein. Remember what I have 
said to you ! ' 

The bride dropped her glove, and Eppelein, return- 
ing it to her with knightly grace, asked her to ask the 
Emperor to grant him two favours. She consented, 
.and she asked the Emperor to do what the courteous 
stranger demanded, and Karl readily promised to do 
.as the bride wished. Thereupon Eppelein and the 
Emperor talked long together, and Karl was charmed 
with Eppelein's bright, bold wit. Then Eppelein 
preferred his first request ; it was that Karl would 
give a gold gulden to Hans von Lobenstein. 

The Emperor laughed loud and long. 
: * Thou art a nobleman, though, it may be, a poor 



202 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

one, 5 said Karl. ' The gold gulden shall be paid ;. 
but yet I have a mind to lay thee in the tower for 
thine audacious talk and bold request/ 

But the Emperor could not do this, because he had 
given his royal word for the stranger's safety. So- 
Eppelein bowed and vanished, and shortly after the 
Chamberlain handed to the Kaiser a letter. It was- 
from Eppelein, who said that a good KnecJit should 
always, so far as possible, imitate his master ; that 
he did, so far as he could, imitate his Emperor, who* 
pawned and pledged cities and towns, took spoil, and 
sack and plunder, wherever he could seize them. The 
writer did the same thing also. He had pawned 
Niirnberg to Hans von Lobenstein for a gold gulden, 
and was, for the information of the Kaiser and the 
bride — EPPELEIN. Karl laughed rather grimly, but 
the fair lady knew that she had seen Eppelein with- 
out knowing that he was Eppelein, and she thought 
with pleasure of the stately figure and bright face of 
the renowned robber-knight. 

This Jacklein was a Jew, who was consumed with 
a fierce hatred of the oppressors of his race. He 
used Eppelein to obtain vengeance upon the Niirn- 
bergers, and he meant then to use Niirnberg to be 
revenged upon Eppelein. He was the second Jew 
— Elias was the first — who treacherously sought to 
betray the Ranbritter. 

One day Jacklein stabbed Eppelein's favourite 
horse, took another from the stables, and on it rode 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 203 

into Niirnberg, and proposed a plan for Eppelein's 
capture. The Rath listened to him and trusted him, 
so great was Niirnberg's hatred and dread of Eppelein. 

Jacklein denounced all Eppelein's adherents in the 
city, and these unfortunate persons disappeared into 
the FroschtJuirm. At the cold feet of the Iron 
Virgin yawned a deep and dark oubliette. . . . 

Eppelein was beside himself with rage, and swore 
to have the life of the traitor Jacklein. The Jew r 
meanwhile vanished from the city, and the Rath 
began to suspect his honesty. 

One day a man rushed into Niirnberg calling out 
that Eppelein was taken ! What had really happened 
was this. Jacklein caused it to be intimated to 
Eppelein that he, the Jew, w T as hidden in a certain 
village. Eppelein called for his horse, and with the 
two Bernheimers and four Knechts, rode off at once, 
bent blindly upon vengeance. 

Arrived at the village, Eppelein and his followers 
rode straight to the inn in which they expected to 
find Jacklein. The landlord, who was in the plot, 
asked them to hide themselves in the house till Jack- 
lein, who w T as looked for every minute, should arrive. 

So Eppelein fell into the wily Jew's snare. 

While the Bernheimers and Eppelein sat drinking 
in the inn, crowds of armed men gathered round the 
house, and they drew up nine waggons across the 
front of the door. 

Eppelein heard the sound and hum of a mass of 



204 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

men, and he soon became aware of the trap laid for 
him. The Bernheimers and the four Knechts tried 
to escape by the back of the house, but they were 
surrounded by numbers and made prisoners. 

Eppelein mounted his horse — not, alas ! the grey 
— and issued forth alone by the front gateway of the 
inn. The great crowd, which bristled with spears 
and swords, raised a shout when they saw the terri- 
ble Eppelein appear mounted before them. He saw 
his danger at a glance. Crying out, ' Freedom or 
death ! You shall not easily take Eppelein ! • he put 
his horse at the waggons, hoping to cut his way 
through his foes. The horse sprang over eight of 
the waggons, but could not clear the ninth, and 
crashed down upon the pile. Then Eppelein on 
foot, with only his sword, stood facing that host of 
enemies. They wanted to take him alive ; he wished 
to die if he could not escape. 

The fight — Eppelein's last fight — began. This 
man, alone amongst that crowd of enemies, did pro- 
digies of valour. He is said to have killed or mor- 
tally wounded twenty of his foes, but the fight was 
a fight of utter desperation ; he fought, not for life, 
but for death, and the odds against him were too 
terrible. He was borne down, seized and bound, 
and carried away to Neumarkt. 

In the fight Eppelein had cloven Jacklein through 
the skull. The fanatic of revenge perished by the 
sword of the master he had betrayed. 



EPPELEIN VON GAILINGEN. 205 

The long career of success had come to a violent 
end. The Ranbritter were condemned to die ; and 
on a fair summer morning, Eppelein and the two 
Bernheimers stood upon the high scaffold in the 
market-place of Neumarkt. An enormous crowd 
raised upturned faces to the lofty platform. Niirn- 
berg was defrauded of its show, and Neumarkt re- 
joiced in the horrible spectacle. 

The Bernheimers perished first by the shearing 
sweep of the headsman's broad blade, and then 
Eppelein was broken alive on or by the wheel. He 
refused the services of a priest. In his day of pride 
and power he had always been wont to say that ' a 
man should live as a free and mighty hero, and 
should die without fear/ He had laboured to live 
up to his theorem of life, and he certainly bore his 
death of slow agony with the calmest courage. 

When the head was gone, the members were no 
longer dangerous. Wolf von Wurmstein succeeded 
to the command, but the dreaded band, which Eppe- 
lein had led so long and so successfully, soon melted 
away. Some perished by the sword of the foeman, 
others by the sw T ord of the headsman. Many disap- 
peared, and the highways of Franconia were freed 
from the terror of the great robber band. 

So ended the wild life of the chivalrous criminal,, 
of the most renowned robber-knight, EPPELEIN VON 
GAILINGEN. 



FACTS AND FANCIES AB0U1 
FAUST. 

I. — The Legend and the Stage. 

x Der Faustist doch etwas Incommensurables, und alle Ver- 
suche, ihn dem Verstande naher zu bringen, sind vergeb- 
lich. Auch muss man bedenken, dass der erste Theil aus 
einem etwas dunkeln Zustande des Individuums hervor- 
gegangen. Aber eben dieses Dunkel reizt die Menschen, 
und sie muhen sich daran ab, wie an alien unauflosbaren 
Problemen. — Goethe to Eckermann.' — ^d January 1830. 

TMOGRAPHY, basing itself mainly upon tradition, 
and largely impregnated by fable, records the 
-existence, in the second half of the fifteenth, and in 
the early years of the sixteenth century, of a Dr 
Johann Faust, philosopher, scholar, magician, conjuror. 
This Dr Faust was born, it is supposed, in Kund- 
lingen, now called Knittlingen, in Wiirtemberg ; left 
ordinary studies for that of the black science, which 
he mastered in Krakau, and there instructed in un- 
lawful arts his Famulus (or servitor) and disciple, 
Wagner. Faust is said to have exercised his power 
of summoning to his aid the Evil One, and to have 



FACTS AXD FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 207 

made a compact with the devil, in virtue of which the 
soul of the magician should become the property of 
the fiend in consideration of a period of twenty-four 
years of enjoyment of all desires, and of all the 
pleasures that the senses, that the lust of the eye and 
the pride of life, can yield. Faust was to have, for 
the fulfilment of his purposes, a certain devil (Mephis- 
topheles by name) attached to his person and service, 
and always at his command. The doctor travelled 
far and wide in Germany, with his attendant fiend ; 
enjoyed himself to the uttermost, and set the world 
wondering at the feats that he could perform. At 
the end of the covenanted time, the inexorable Evil 
One claimed his bargain, and the unhappy doctor was 
robbed of life, under circumstances of gross cruelty, 
at the village of Rimlich, between the hours (these 
are very precisely given) of twelve at night and one 
in the morning. Meantime his fame for wonder- 
working and for the diabolic art had become great, 
and widely spread throughout all Germany, and even 
in other countries of Europe. 

The priests were glad of so pregnant an example 
of the danger of meddling with those unholy arts 
which, though forbidden, were yet then generally 
believed in ; the vulgar love of the wonderful and the 
horrible was deeply excited by the life, death, and 
adventures of this potent magician ; and hence it 
came to pass that Dr Faust became the property 
of popular credulity and awe ; and that, within some 



208 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

few years after his terrible death, his name and fame- 
were bruited through all the land. Narrative and 
drama, the book and the stage, laid hold of the dark 
doctor ; and such reputations speedily became the 
subjects of exaggeration. The life of Faust pene- 
trated into the life of the people, and from many sides 
was found to be attractive, awful, and suggestive. 
The flames of hell light up a huge fire upon earth. 
The sense of that dim unholy power which can com- 
mand the services of demons, and which can, by such 
aid, enjoy years of the enjoyment of every earthly 
lust, lays hold of superstitious fancy ; and the tragic 
end of such a man has an appalling grandeur which 
impresses and stirs the popular imagination. Poems,, 
pantomimes, puppet-plays, tragedies upon the subject 
of the great conjuror appeared in numbers. In 1599 
Wiedemann published, in Hamburg, his ' Wahrhaftige 
Historien von denen greulichen Siinden Dr Joh. 
Faustens.' Printed at once in Cologne and in Niirn- 
berg, but without date on the title-page, comes next 
' Des durch die ganze Welt verrufenen Erzschwarz 
Kiinstler's und Zauberer's Dr Faust mit dem Teufel 
aufgerichtetes Biindniss, abenteuerlicher Lebens- 
wandel, und schreckliches Ende.' 

Nay, the legend of Dr Faust spread beyond Ger- 
many to other countries of Europe, and, before the 
end of the sixteenth century, Marlowe had produced 
in England his ' Tragicall Historie of Dr Faustus.' 
It would be impossible to enumerate here all the 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 209 

shapes which this most popular, though intensely Ger- 
man legend, has taken in literature and in the drama. 
A direct product of its time, the tradition is yet full of 
vital, of perennial essence, whether of wonder only, 
or of wonder blent with superstitious fear. We no 
longer believe in the gods of Greece, but we still love 
the beauty of the myths that they represent, and the 
sculpturesque glory of the forms in which they were 
incarnated by human imagination, and in which they 
still exist in the ideality of the pure marble. Goethe 
found a most moving and picturesque tradition, a 
story known, at least, to every German, and sus- 
ceptible, as he soon saw, of great art-treatment as the 
vehicle of the very deepest meanings. It attracted 
him in his poet youth ; unhasting, but unresting, he 
worked out of it gradually during the long years of 
manhood his own dramatic version, and the com- 
pleted work crow r ned his sovereign age with its 
brightest glory. Seldom in the history of literature 
has a great poet so wisely or so happily selected a 
subject which would exert his powers to the very top 
of their bent. The idea of Faust is now inseparably 
and distinctively associated with the name of Goethe ; 
and he has made the old, old story immortal by 
enclosing its rude outline and essence in all the 
higher meanings, in all the deeper beauty that lie 
could add to it. Goethe, himself a magician in the 
divine sort, found noble material for his art in the 
mediaeval legend of the black wizard, Faust. 

O 



2IO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

The first 'part of Goethe's Faust was begun, pro- 
bably, in or even before 1774. The execution of the 
poem spread itself slowly over some thirty years. It 
was worked upon gradually, in the intervals of much 
other work, at many times and in many places — one 
scene was written in the Borghese Gardens in Rome 
— and was first printed, in its complete form, in 1806 ; 
a perilous and distracted time, in which the French 
victory of Jena exposed Weimar to occupation by 
French troops, and caused the destruction of many 
German manuscripts — as, for instance, Herder's 
posthumous manuscripts and Meyer's works. Goethe's 
own house was filled with soldiers, and, inspired by a 
dread of the possible destruction of the completed 
manuscript of his masterpiece, he at once sheltered it 
in the security of print. 

This first part of Faust was first produced upon the 
stage on 19th January 1829. The theatre to which 
this honour belongs is the Hoftheater, of Brunswick ; 
and Herr Eduard Devrient, in his ' Geschichte der 
Deutschen Schauspielkunst,' tells the story of the 
original adaptation of Goethe's infinite, but dramatic 
poem, for acting ; and of its first presentation on the 
boards of a German theatre. 

August Klingemann had long been the successful 
director of the Hoftheater in Brunswick ; but when, 
in 1826, the young Duke Karl (he was then eighteen 
years of age) came to the ducal throne, he evinced 
a lively interest in the drama. The aesthetic Duke's 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 211 

interference was not of unmixed advantage to 
the theatre. He paralysed the beneficial working of 
Klingemann, and he then appointed his Master of the 
Horse, Herr von Oeynhausen, to be Intendant of the 
theatre. Klingemann was not dismissed, but his ex- 
cellent theatrical discipline was destroyed, and his 
•efforts in the cause of true dramatic art were seriously 
let and hindered. The young prince interfered per- 
sonally with the management of the theatre ; he at- 
tended rehearsals ; he set aside Klingemann's excel- 
lent rules, and thwarted Klingemann's strenuous aims 
and objects. The result of princely interference was 
not productive of good. Many of the best actors left 
the theatre, and those who remained were demoralised 
by a system of capricious favouritism. Young princes 
who meddle with the management of theatres have a 
tendency to take an almost disproportionate interest 
in the representatives of female characters, and Duke 
Karl's theatrical activity was, in this, as in other re- 
spects, very injurious to the Brunswick Hoftheater. 

One caprice, however, of the young duke led to a 
most important result — to the production on the Bruns- 
wick stage of Goethe's Faust. Klingemann was him- 
self the author of a dramatic version of the old Faust 
legend ; and this version, which seems to have had, in its 
day, a moderate stage success, Klingemann was fond 
of producing in the theatre which he so ably managed. 

On some occasion on which Klingemann's Faust 
was presented, Duke Karl, who loved to tease and to 



212 



STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 



thwart the great manager, asked Klingemann why he 
did not produce the Faust of Goethe ; and the Duke 
intimated that Klingemann dreaded the rivalry of 
Goethe. Klingemann replied that he would not 
venture to compare his play with that of Goethe ; but 
that Goethe had not written his poem for the stage,, 
and that it might be difficult to adapt it for represen- 
tation. This was surely a not unnatural idea, as 
things then stood, or were held to stand, on the part 
of the director. The Duke persisted; he had, he said, 
looked through Goethe's play, and found it intrinsi- 
cally dramatic and very possible for acting. The Duke r 
naturally enough, carried his point. Klingemann him- 
self adapted, for the first time, Goethe's poem for 
actual representation ; and the piece was performed, 
with enormous success, on 19th January 1829.* 

* The following is a copy of the playbill of the first performance, on 
any public stage, of Goethe's Faust : — 

BRAUNSCHWEIG-HOFTHEATER. 

MONTAG, DEN 19 JANUAR, 1829. 

Zum Erstenmal : 

FAUST. 

Tragodie in sechs Abtheilungen von Goethe, fur die Biihne redigirt. 

PERSONEM. 



Faust ...... Hr. Schutz. 

Wagner, sein Famulus Hr. Senk. 



Mephistopheles 
Der Erdgeist . . . 
Boser Geist .... 
Ein Schiiler . . . 
Frosch \ ... 
Brander [ ... 
Siebel 1 ... 
Altmayer ) ... 
Eine Hexe . . . 
Margarethe, ein Biir- 

germadchen . . 
Valentin, ihr, Bruder, 

Soldat .... 
Frau Marthe, ihre 

Nachbarin . . . 



Hr. Marr 
Hr.- Dessoir. 
Hr. Gossmann. 
Hr. Hiibsch. 
Hr. Eggers. 
Hr. Giinther. 
Hr. Moller. 
Hr. Scholz. 
Mad. Lay. 

Mad. Berger. 

Hr. Kettel. 

Mad. Klingemann, 



J^rster % n , , f Hr 

Zweiterl^T^'JHr 
DritterJ bursche ' iHr 



Hr. Feuerflacke. 
Kuster. 
Fischer. 



Zwei e ter} Schmer * ' 

Erstes ) Dienstmad- , 

Zweites / chen . . 

Erstes ) Biirgermad- 

Zweites / chen . . 

Erster \ 

Zweiter > Biirger . . 

Dritter ) 

Eine alte Wahrsagerin 



f Hr. Berger. 
I Hr. Fitzenhagen. 
( Dem. Solbrig. 
t Elise Hambath. 
(Mad Grosser. 
I Dem. Hopfner. 
Hr. Gerard. 



{.tir. be 
Hr. Cla 
Hr. Hj 



larpius. 
Taars. 
Mad. Heeser. 



Soldaten, Volk, Erscheinungen und Geister. 



Der Anfang ist um 6 Uhr, und das Ende nach halb 10 Uhr. 
Die Casse vvird "m 5 Uhr geoffnet, 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 213 

Klingemann, to whom the credit of the first dra- 
matic rendering of Faust is to be ascribed, died in 
1831. 

The next appearance of Goethe's Faust on the 
German stage occurred on 27th August 1829, at 
Dresden. The Dresden Theatre was then under the 
brilliant and intellectual management of Ludwig 
Tieck, who naturally desired to add the German 
masterpiece to his long and glorious repertoire. Tieck 
hesitated, at first, from some fear that Goethe's won- 
derful poem would suffer when brought into contact 
with the realism of the scene ; but the Dresden public 
demanded its production, and Tieck was not willing 
to remain behind when Klingemann had shown the 
way. It seems tolerably clear that the version then 
played at Dresden was arranged by Tieck himself. 
Indeed, it is highly probable that at least slight 
differences exist even yet between the various versions 
of Faust played in the different leading theatres of 
Germany. Each director takes his own view ; and 
has power, within his own province, to translate his 
view into action. Each leading theatre in Germany 
possesses certainly its own acting copy of Goethe's 
Faust ; though some slight modification may possibly 
be allowed when a great star — as Seydelmann or 
Emil Devrient — travels about with his Gastrolleu, and 
plays Mephistopheles or Faust with the arrangement 
which, as the actor thinks, best suits his own style, or 
his own means of producing effect in the play. 



214 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

The star-actor is, in Germany, as great and as dog- 
matic a potenate as he is elsewhere in Europe. The 
actor is the despot of the stage. 

Of all parts in the drama, Goethe's Mephistopheles 
would seem to be almost the most difficult character 
that an actor could undertake ; difficult to conceive, 
almost more difficult to execute : for Goethe's fiend 
is an unearthly being. At times we shudder at and 
shrink from, this mystic being, who is not of our 
order, who cannot be touched with a sympathy 
with our feelings or with our infirmities. It w T ill be 
of interest to us to consider the actor — Seydelmann — 
who is renowned in Germany as the most notable 
Mephistopheles, and to analyse a little his conception 
and his rendering of the great part : but it should 
be borne in mind that, apart from the character to be 
represented, apart from the due relations of that 
character to the play, apart even from the reverence 
due to the poet's conception, there is a great art 
of abstract acting ; an art which, by tones, looks, 
gestures, by living dramatically a powerful situation, 
by embodying moving passion, may be most highly 
effective, as acting ; and which may yet be wanting 
in consideration for the dramatist's intentions. This 
abstract art of acting may produce a vital effect 
out of a poor play; or may find its opportunity of 
displaying itself without a scrupulous regard to the 
ideas of the author of the drama. 

Mephistopheles is mainly modern in conception ; 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 21 5 

nay, it may be said that Goethe's fiend could only 
exist in a world which had known Voltaire. Goethe 
tells Eckermann of the great influence which Voltaire 
exercised upon his youthful thinkings ; and, long 
after any teaching of Voltaire had ceased to impel 
Goethe, this influence survived into his age in the 
form of his knowledge of the tone of thought which 
he attributes to Mephisto. In taking human form, 
in mingling with human action, the fiend loses much 
of the grandiose mystery with which the pious ab- 
horrence of earlier and of simpler ages had sur- 
rounded him. Goethe evidentlv^does not believe — 
at least, in the ruder and more objective sense — in 
the fiend ; nor does he tremble before Lucifer. If 
he had believed, he would have had more reverence 
for Satan ; but Goethe shows persiflage in his very 
treatment of the mocking spirit. The sneer of 
Mephistopheles is as the sneer of Voltaire ; as bitter 
and as barren : for Voltaire's withering mockery was 
rendered intense by his close contact with IJInfame ; 
and Mephistopheles, in his futile activity, in his nega- 
tive knowledge, and in his frustrated malignity, 
suggests to us a spirit which has outlived the times 
in which men believed in him. The dramatic useful- 
ness of Mephisto as the symbol of a spirit of evil 
is, nevertheless, as great, or perhaps greater, than 
it would have been in days of infernal faith. That 
earnestness of ideal belief in a personal Evil Spirit 
which inspires Milton's vision of Satan was wanting 



2l6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

in a day which still tingled with cold laughter at 
the irony of Voltaire, and at the scepticism of the 
eighteenth century. Goethe was too unconsciously 
genuine to depict a demon of much more ideal eleva- 
tion than one who should combine the costume of 
the Middle Ages with the tone of the modern master 
of mockery. 

Shakspeare does not genuinely believe in the 
supernatural. His intellect denies that in which his 
imagination revels. Note the immense difference 
between his real awe of death and his half-assumed 
awe of the supernatural. He uses the supernatural — 
or men's belief in it — with the grandest art; but his 
day was so much nobler than the eighteenth century, 
that no man of Elizabeth's spacious times would have 
embodied the arch-fiend in a spurious human shape 
of mocking, and mocked at, irony. In the very play 
in which Shakspeare introduces a ghost, he speaks 
of death as a bourne from which no traveller returns. 
His ghost is forbidden to reveal to Hamlet the secrets 
of a purgatorial prison-house : the apparition of the 
dead king appears chiefly to impel human action in 
a tragic tangle of murder and of incest. The spirit 
of dead Caesar appears to warn Brutus at Philippi ; 
the ghosts of Richard's victims cheer Richmond, and 
sit heavy on the soul of Richard. The witches, 
daemonic agents of Hecate, translate Macbeth's am- 
bitious imaginings into the fulfilment of fatal pro- 
phecy ; and a popular, superstitious belief in these 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 2iy 

debased agents of the Evil One is used for high and 
subtle art purposes, as a lure to tempt the Thane of 
Glamis to those crimes which lead him to his ruin. 
The difference of the ages in which they lived is as 
great as the difference between the men themselves; 
and this truth appears clearly when we consider and 
compare the uses which Shakspeare and which 
Goethe make of the supernatural in art. 

It is a poiiit of some difficulty for the actor playing 
Mephistopheles to determine how far he shall hide, 
or seem to hide, from the other persons of the drama, 
the fact that he is really embodying the devil. It is 
clear that the author did not intend Mephisto to 
be recognised for what he is by other characters. 
Gretchen, it is true, instinctively, dislikes and distrusts 
him ; his countenance is repellant to her — and then 
he takes no joy in anything — but, on the other hand, 
Marthe is willing to marry him ; and the revellers of 
Auerbach's Keller, though exasperated by his mock- 
ing persiflage, do not know that it is the devil himself 
who has them by the collar. Gretchen herself dislikes 
him only as a hateful man. The poet could not 
allow a recognised fiend to mix visibly with human 
beings in the tragic, or the common-place, affairs of 
mortal life. For the actor who * plays the devil ' 
•ostensibly, it may be urged that the audience know 
well who Mephisto is ; and they also know that the 
other persons of the drama must not know. The 
audience are not careful to see the other characters 



2l8 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

well deceived in this particular. Seydelmann cared 
much more for his audience than he did for his poet, 
or for the other characters. He wanted to display 
Seydelmann, through Mephisto, and to get the 
utmost possible amount of effect out of so doing. 
The genius of the stern and spectral North — differing 
therein widely from Greek feeling — has always re- 
presented the fiend through an objective form of 
grotesque, repulsive horror. The vulgar idea of horns 
and tail expresses this tone of sentiment vulgarly. 
That art which is Representation has evolved out of 
itself a law, in virtue of which the fiend cannot be 
embodied in a beautiful human form. Goethe de- 
veloped the traditions of the Middle Ages, and 
employed, with a happy result, the red doublet and 
hose, the short red cloak, the long rapier, and the 
single cock's feather in the cap, when he depicted his 
Evil Spirit in human shape. Milton stood in no 
relation to the mediaeval spirit ; his high and shaping 
imagination distended his conception of Satan to the 
vague vastness of a colossal ideal. 

Karl Seydelmann, born in 1793, was the son of a. 
grocer and coffee-house keeper in Glatz. His father's 
business included a billiard-room, which was much 
resorted to by the officers of the garrison. These 
officers were in the habit of getting up amateur 
theatrical performances, and young Karl Seydelmann^ 
who evinced an early and decided talent for acting, 
made his debut at the amateur representations of 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 219 

the officers at Glatz. In 18 10, the young Seydel- 
mann elected the profession of arms. Helped, pro- 
bably, by officers whom he had met in his father's 
billiard-room., he entered the Prussian artillery ; but 
he soon acquired a disgust for soldiering, and in 
181 1 he deserted, escaping by means of a forged 
passport, authenticated by a well-imitated signature 
of his major. The army succeeded in reclaiming 
Seydelmann's services, but, on account of his beau- 
tiful handwriting, he was exclusively employed in 
office work. He knew, indeed, so little of his mili- 
tary duties that, as he himself relates with great 
amusement, he once, on the occasion of an inspec- 
tion, was wholly unable to fire off a cannon. In 1815 
(the year of Waterloo) we find him playing at Count 
Herberstein's theatre in Grafenort. From Grafenort 
he transferred his services to the Breslau Theatre, 
from which he drew a salary often dollars a-week. 

In Breslau he replaced an actor named Kettel, and 
had there to perform the young-lover parts. For 
such characters Seydelmann was but little fitted. 
He was of middle height, and had bow legs. His 
features were neither striking nor pleasing ; his hair 
was red. The glance of his blue eyes was full of 
fire, and yet was cold in expression. But his most 
serious drawback lay in his speech. His tongue 
was thick, and was long, and his enunciation was, in 
consequence, indistinct, awkward and hissing in tone. 
His voice was rough and thick, had but a limited 



220 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

compass, and was incapable of tenderness or of modu- 
lation. In passionate passages it acquired a tone 
which suggested the growling of wild animals. 

Furnished thus slenderly by Nature with the graces 
or the powers of an actor, Seydelmann's singular de- 
termination and fierce, strong will managed at length 
to conquer the defects which hindered the display of 
his undoubted genius. Director Professor Rhode 
urged him to abandon the stage ; but no discourage- 
ment could repress Seydelmann, who, strong in his 
conviction of his own powers, announced, through 
tears of disappointment, but with passionate gnash- 
ing of teeth and stampings of foot, ' You shall see ; 
I will be an actor yet ! ' 

Where genuine pow r er exists, such strong uncon- 
querable resolution always leads in time to success. 

Seydelmann set to work to subdue his tongue to 
become the organ of his purpose. With incredible 
assiduity he practised declamation with a flat stone 
in his mouth. ' What Demosthenes — who was only 
a man — was able to do, I must also be able to do,' 
said Seydelmann, characteristically and defiantly. 
His proud determination was successful, and he 
made his intractable voice his slave. 

In 1 8 19 he got his first real opening, in the theatre 
at Gratz, in Steuermark. His artistic insight, his 
burning zeal, his boundless ambition, his desire to 
surpass others, were assisted by an acquired skill in 
dealing with men ; and at Gratz he rose rapidly in 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 221 

the profession of his choice. He played all sorts of 
things ; even comic characters, for which, indeed, he 
had no aptitude; though he endeavoured to supply 
the want of comic power by a close study and artistic 
imitation of nature. 

The theatre at Gratz fell under the direction of a 
cab-master, and the haughty Seydelmann at once 
quitted the company. He strolled about for some 
time from place to place, and learned thoroughly, 
in poverty and distress, the miseries of the literally 
poor player's life. The proud, hard man deduced 
from his time of sore struggle the bitter lesson that 
the actor must place his chief dependence upon 
egotism and self-assertion. Sorrows had hardened, 
and not softened, his harsh, domineering, and arrogant 
character. 

At the Court Theatre, in Cassel, Seydelmann first 
obtained the undisputed possession of ' leading busi- 
ness/ and could play the great parts in which his 
artistic ambition really revelled. 

Like a torch, which burns itself away while giving 
light, Seydelmann consumed his own health in a fiery 
attempt to attain to the utmost possible amount of 
effect in his performances. Away from the stage he 
did not drink, but, when acting, he used spirits freely 
with a view to stimulate his nervous system to its 
very highest pitch and strain of effort. This practice 
told, in the long run, very seriously upon Seydel- 
mann's health. Cooke and Edmund Kean both 



OT) 



STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 



drank spirits freely as stimulants to acting; but then 
they also drank them when they were not exerting 
themselves professionally. 

Seydelmann must be ranked as a realistic tragedian. 
He did not belong to the declamatory and ideal school 
of Ouin, or of the Kembles. Garrick, probably the 
actor who restored most nearly the school of the 
contemporaries of Shakspeare, the school of Taylor 
and of Burbage, included in his style both realism 
and ideality. He remained firmly based upon the 
truth of Nature, and yet presented ideal characters 
ideally. Macready, again, belonged to this mixed 
school, which presents forcibly and naturally profound 
passion and pathos, and yet maintains a lofty ideal 
art aim. 

Seydelmann aimed at producing strength of effect. 
He preferred the terrible, the striking, the sensational, 
the surprising. He loved villainous rather than noble 
characters. He loved Richard III. better than King 
Lear. He did not care for the ensemble of a per- 
formance, and never showed a loyal consideration 
for the author. He was selfish as an actor, and 
sought chiefly to unfold and to display his own great 
powers. He was inconsiderate and unfair towards 
his brother artists. He himself has said that 'the 
stage is a field of battle on which one must conquer 
or must die. Whoever stands in the way of my 
success is an enemy that I will strike down. 5 He 
admits that his object is to produce out of every 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 22$ 

character the greatest possible amount of effect. He 
made of every part a subjective property, and de- 
veloped through it the energy of his own personality. 
One curious habit in studying he early adopted and 
always adhered to : he copied out, in his own beauti- 
ful handwriting, every part that he played. He could 
not learn a part from the handwriting of other men. 
Nothing in life came easily to Seydelmann, and he 
was always slow of study. He noted on the margin 
•of his copy the details of his ' business.' With in- 
ventive insight, he easily detected those great mo- 
ments in a character out of which he could produce 
his most splendid effects ; and to effect he always 
looked. His art aims were complected with his 
personal objects. He burned to surpass all his 
comrades, and to make of his acting a victory and 
a glory. The triumph of his own acting — not that 
of the thing acted — was the result for which he 
strove. He cared for truth to Nature in her strength 
rather than for adherence to her modesty. The 
Weimar school of acting, under the direction of 
Goethe and of Schiller, had somewhat resembled 
that of our Kembles : Seydelmann was the fiery 
Kean who despised art when it hampered the success 
of strong and working effect 

Fanny Kemble says : — Kean is a man of decided 
genius, no matter how he abuses Nature's good gift. 
He has it. He has the first element of all genius — 
Power. . . . Let his deficiences be what they 



224 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETCl 

may, his faults however obvious, his conceptions 
however erroneous, and his characters, each con- 
sidered as a whole, however imperfect, he has the 
one atoning faculty that compensates for everything 
else — that seizes, rivets, electrifies all who see and 
hear him, and stirs, down to their very springs, the 
passionate elements of our nature. Genius alone can 
do this. Kean may not be an actor, he may not be 
an artist, but he is a man of genius, and instinctively,, 
with a word, a look, a gesture, tears away the veil 
from the heart of our common humanity, lays it bare 
as it beats in every human heart and as it throbs in 
his own. Kean speaks with his whole living frame to 
us, and every fibre of ours answers to his appeal. I 
do not know that I ever saw him in any character 
which impressed me as zvliole work of art ; he never 
seems to me to intend to be any one of his parts, but 
I think he intends that all his parts should be him. 
So it is not Othello, Shylock, Sir Giles ; it is Kean, 
and in every one of his characters there is an intense 
personality of his own that, while one is under its in- 
fluence, defies all criticism — moments of such over- 
powering passion, accents of such tremendous power, 
looks and gestures of such thrilling, piercing meaning, 
that the excellence of those parts of his performance 
more than atones for his want of greater unity in con- 
ception and smoothness in the entire execution of 
them/ 

Mrs Kemble's fine criticism on Kean would apply, 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 225 

to a very great extent, to Seydelmann also. They 
were players whose powers were not dissimilar, and 
whose aims in acting were based upon the same force 
of personality and fervour of genius. 

Seydelmann took but little interest in the abstract 
drama. He desired eagerly to startle an audience 
and to surpass all competitors ; and he early saw 
that 'he who will rule the world must not try to 
better it.' He accepted everything that he found 
existing in any theatre, and strove only, to find fit 
opportunities for the display of Seydelmann himself. 

I may, perhaps, be permitted to reproduce here a 

short extract from a previous essay,* in which I said 

of Seydelmann : — 

Vis-a-vis poet and public, Seydelmann thought chiefly of him- 
self — of the effect which he could produce, of the applause he 
could obtain. He is accused of having often sacrificed his part 
and his author to some startling reading, to some surprising 
point. On the other hand, he was wholly original ; he followed 
no other actor ; he was full of fire and of force, and his own 
strong, clear will shone through all his performances. When he 
is compared, as he often is, with his great rival Ludwig Devrient, 
you always find that Devrient's performance is spoken of as a 
whole, while Seydelmann is remembered for his points. Devrient 
sank his personality in modest devotion to his art : Seydelmann 
asserted himself through and above his art : he was an intense 
and most moving actor, of strong points, and of electric effects- 
He always excited his audiences to enthusiasm ; and he attracted 
more, perhaps, than any other German actor has done before or 
since. He disliked playing with great or even good actors ; and 
he would conceal his most startling points at rehearsal in order 
to prevent his fellow-artists from divining the effects he intended. 

* 'A Glance at the German Stage.' 



226 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

He was a great, a powerful, a moving, an original actor ; but 
was self-seeking and vain. He was the first and the greatest 
of the matadors, or star-actors in Germany. 

Seydelmann died in 1843. Herr Eduard Devrient 
cites many instances of Seydelmann's violations of 
the poet's text; violations introduced solely with a 
view to producing new and startling effects as an 
actor; and Herr Devrient refers particularly for in- 
stances of this vice in conception to Seydelmann's 
Shylock, Marinelli (Emilia Galotti), Alba (in Eg- 
mont), Don Carlos (Clavigo), Antonio (Tasso), Ossip 
(Isidor and Olga), Brandon (Eugene Aram), and 
Mephistopheles. Thus Seydelmann's Shylock was 
not the despised and humble Jew of Venice, but was 
a raging fury, who appeared as a despot, who domi- 
nated Doge and Senate, and stood above all other 
persons. He distorted the relation of Shylock to the 
drama, and to the other characters ; his denunciation 
of Antonio was so violent that spectators expected to 
see Shylockassault the merchant, and cut the throat 
of Antonio. As Alba he received Egmont with such 
indicated meaning of fell intention, that the insou- 
ciance of Egmont, as that is depicted by Goethe,, 
seemed the merest folly. He was fond, for the pur- 
poses of strong effect, of splitting up a speech into 
' asides,' which were never contemplated by the author. 
When, in the fourth act, Clavigo confesses his inten- 
tion to marry, Don Carlos has to exclaim, — ' Hell, 
death, and the devil ! and thou wilt marry her ? y 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 227 

Seydelmann said the first part of the sentence as an 
aside, and then said, coldly and scornfully, to Clavigo, 
'And thou wilt marry her?' Into the part of An- 
tonio, in Tasso, he imported a suggestion of suspicious 
relations with the Countess Sanvitale. But Seydel- 
mann has for us most interest in connexion with 
Mephistopheles. 

In Germany, generally, Seydelmann ranks as the 
great Mephisto. Old playgoers, who accompany you 
to see some other representative of the arch-fiend 
of the drama, say, sorrowfully, ' Ah, if you could only 
have seen Seydelmann in the character ! ' His bio- 
grapher, Rotscher, speaks with boundless, if with 
undiscriminating, enthusiasm of this unquestionably 
powerful performance, while Eduard Devrient, on 
the other hand, speaks of it with discrimination, but 
with a tempered enthusiasm. The part requires the 
utmost intensity of meaning, but cannot bear the 
merest suggestion of passion, of warmth of feeling, or 
of human, earthly force. 

Seydelmann maintained that he depicted the devil 
of the old Faust legend, and that Goethe would have 
been astonished if he could have seen the terrible 
attributes and the force that could be thrown by an 
actor into this fiend that the poet had raised, but had 
only sketched in words. Seydelmann said, — ' He 
who draws the devil on the wall must not faint with 
fear if the original should grin at him through the 
sketch.' Apart from the broad, general consentience 



228 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

of popular admiration, that most powerful, that most 
awful presentation of Seydelmann in Mephisto is a 
standing subject of critical controversy in Germany. 
Seydelmann indulged his realistic tendencies to the 
top of their bent in Mephistopheles. He was always 
the fiend as he appears on the Blocksberg, where 
he is recognised as the devil. Seydelmann destroyed 
the position of Mephisto vis-d-vis the other char- 
acters and the drama itself. His ' make up ' was 
dreadfully impressive. He was fierce, coarse, re- 
pulsive, dreadful ; he excited wild laughter ; though 
that laughter of spectators was, as I imagine, that 
relief to overstrained feeling which echoes hollowly 
through the morbid merriment which greets Iago's 
murder of Roderigo. Seydelmann would not de- 
scend, in irony, to the travelling cavalier, to the pos- 
sible comrade of humanity. 'Where,' asks Immer- 
mann, 'where is the Marinelli of hell that Goethe 
intended?' But, whatever injury Seydelmann may 
have done to the meaning of the poet, his Mephis- 
topheles, i.e., himself in Mephistopheles, was most 
terribly real, was most awfully powerful ; the nerves, 
as the imaginations, of spectators were wholly sub- 
dued and dominated, and full theatres emptied 
themselves, after the performance, of excited, deeply 
moved men and women, upon whose lives was 
stamped a permanent image of great horror, who 
had been in dramatic contact with an infra-human 
being, and who (as I have learned by experience of 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 229 

them) would never wholly forget the impression 
made upon them by Seydelmann's weird Mephisto- 
pheles. The effect that he then produced resembled 
that which Kean, Macready, Rachel have also made 
on the feelings and on the imaginations of men. It is 
the effect produced by mighty abstract acting ; and 
may exist in some cases apart from the design or the 
creation of the poet whose work has been presented 
on the stage. The stage itself, as an entity, has some- 
thing daemonic in its abstract essence and working. 

Kuhne, of Darmstadt, is the best Mephistopheles 
that I have seen. At proper times he raised a shudder 
in the spectator at imaginary contact with an evil 
spirit ; and he always suggested, subtly, the infra- 
natural, while his relations with mortals were suffi- 
ciently probable. He could express the cold, cynical, 
inhuman fiend. Doring was too human — too full of 
bonhomie. You could not enough realise the devil. 
Dawison is held to have been too forcible and fierce. 
I think that Macready would have been as fine and 
subtle a fiend as the stage could wish for ; his intel- 
lect would have added to the human devilry of Iago 
the unearthly devilry of the very fiend himself. He 
who could so well play Shakspeare would also have 
interpreted Goethe. 

Through Seydelmann the poet had raised a devil 
that he could not control ; the actor played, literally, 
the very devil. His Mephisto must have been recog- 
nised as the fiend by the other characters, and such 



23O STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

recognition would have been fatal to Mephisto's plans ; 
but while acting the part, Seydelmann paralysed 
criticism. Men do not laugh when they are under 
water ; they do not criticise while their judgments 
are submerged by the genius of abstract acting. In 
Mephistopheles there is nothing human but the 
assumption of humanity ; but that assumption should 
be sufficiently depicted. The incarnate Evil Spirit is 
seen to act visibly, as he does act occultly, in his 
attempts to lead men to their harm ; but to one man 
only in the play is the fiend really known. Seydel- 
mann forgot, perhaps, too much the modesty of his 
art in his lust for her power. 

Frau Niemann-Seebach is the best Gretchen that I 
have seen ; indeed, it would be impossible to conceive, 
or to desire, a better representative of the part ; nor 
could a more perfect Marthe than Frau Frieb- 
Blumauer be imagined. Emil Devrient was a great 
Faust ; though he failed, before the magic change to 
youth came, to depict clearly enough the bowed, 
worn, prematurely-aged student. After the change, 
he was an ideal cavalier. Hendrichs, as Faust, was 
too declamatory, robust, loud ; he opened the play 
with a voice of rolling thunder. He began in virile 
middle age, and did not grow younger after drinking 
the witch's draught. 

Faust is held, by German actors, to be what players 
call a i thankless part' They consider that the 
character, in stage representation, is overshadowed, is 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 23 1 

obscured by that of Mephistopheles. German star- 
actors prefer the fiend to the philosopher ; nor is it to 
be wondered at that the greater effect should be pro- 
duced in the most unique part in the drama — in a 
part which embodies a transcendental apparition seen 
through the mask of a human form. Faust strives, 
strains, inquires, acts, sins — suffers ; Mephisto is 
the embodiment of denial, of blindness to goodness, 
truth, nobleness, beauty ; he represents, through the 
terribly grotesque, irony, sneering, scorn, filth, evil, 
mockery. His very appearance on the stage, among 
human actors, is a sensation, a terror, a wonder, a 
portent of incarnate diablerie. Intrinsically. Mephis- 
topheles is more a puppet than is Faust ; but, on the 
stage, this does not seem to be so. This wonderful 
and terrible drama of two souls apparently hopelessly 
enmeshed by the devil, places Mephisto, to all appear- 
ance, in the position of motor, ruler ; but he is so to 
appearance only, since his fruitless activity in reality 
only subserves the high, inscrutable designs of omni- 
potent wisdom. The devil, according to Goethe's views 
and showing, is the mere puppet and factor of the 
Deity. Faust is certainly one of the most exhaust- 
ing parts for an actor. It is very long, and is always 
to be played throughout at a high, pitch of passion. 
There is, in the first part, the tragedy of thought 
and of the soul ; there is, in the later parts of the 
play, the tragedy of passion, love, conscience, remorse. 
In the early parts, Faust's impatient, defiant soul, 



232 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

weighted with cares about its relation to the Unseen, 
feeling (as Goethe himself had felt) the vanity of 
knowledge, is driven, in haughty desperation, to the 
black art and to the eager fiend ; and this part re- 
quires from the actor most difficult and passionate 
art. Later, after the magic transformation, after the 
return to youth, the part culminates in passion, 
though it is passion of a more human sort. Indeed, 
it has been suggested ('Werel's Goethe's Faust, in 
Bezug auf Scenerie und Buhnendarstellung') that the 
part of Faust should be played by two actors, one 
sustaining it up to the scene in the witch's kitchen, 
the other assuming it at that point and continuing it 
to the end. German actors, in my opinion, fail to 
render in the earlier scenes the comparative age of 
the over-worn student ; they make the Faust of the 
opening too vigorous and robust ; there is not con- 
trast enough between the sage and the cavalier. 
They trust too much to the philosopher's long beard. 
Both Emil Devrient and Hendrichs seem to me to 
have failed in this respect. German actresses, on the 
other hand, often make Marthe too ugly and too old. 
A very eminent Mephistopheles said, — * The play is 
called Faust, not Mephisto ; and the greatest diffi- 
culty in the latter part is, perhaps, to avoid putting it 
too strongly forward at the expense of the title-part 
My rendering of Mephisto will never be properly ap- 
preciated from all sides until I play it with a Faust 
who can play me down/ 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 233 

In Shakspeare's treatment of historical charac- 
acters, history is enclosed and included in a thing 
more glorious than itself; he did not merely teach 
the letter of history, but he exalted it to an imagina- 
tive ideal, and raised it to the measure of his art. 
He did not violate, but he did elevate truth. Rapt 
up to the heaven of imagination in a chariot of 
the fire of his own genius, he saw the characters of 
history in larger relations, and he depicted them as 
abstract poetical conceptions. Take Queen Katha- 
rine, Henry V., Richard II., as illustrations ; he did 
not falsify, but he overrode history, and used it as a 
basis upon which his insight and his imaginatively 
creative power could raise types of a wider and 
more glorious truth than was comprised in the actual, 
limited fact. Goethe dealt with the Faust of the old 
miracle-play in something of the same spirit. No 
popular legend could present a human soul so com- 
plex, so many-sided, so tried and tempted, as that 
which Goethe evolved out of the rough lumber of 
legend and tradition. 

To deal with -the old Faust legend according to the 
highest modern ideas ; to use the naivete of the still 
vital old popular story as a vehicle for the highest ab- 
stract thought, and as an enclosure for the most moving 
tragedy — this was a problem for distinctive genius ; 
this is the problem which has been solved to a marvel 
by Goethe. The idea that the Evil One should 
directly bargain with man for man's soul, should 



234 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

satisfy all the desires of the heart, the desire for 
pomp, pleasure, power, at the price of the soul of 
the bargainer, is a direct product of the objectivity 
of conception, of the naivete^ of the superstition, of 
the very piety itself, of the Middle Ages. The story 
is essentially German ; it is full of the diablerie which 
is inherent in German imagination. No other country 
could have so well evolved from its moral conscious- 
ness the legend of Faust. No other country could 
so well have developed the poet who could sub- 
ordinate the olden story to the highest purposes of 
thoughtful and imaginative art. The fancy, the half- 
divine mythus of devil and angel contending for 
man's soul, is a more direct objective conception ; 
the bargain between man and demon is the distinc- 
tive essence of the Faust story. 

The peculiar characteristic of Faust as the subject 
of a drama is the circumstance that the Spirit of 
Evil must appear embodied and incarnate among 
the merely human characters. The incarnate dae- 
monic mingles visibly and tangibly with the human 
action. The infra-human influence is to be watched 
and traced in its working, and in the result of that 
working. Take the simple human story of Faust 
— without visible daemonic interference — and it re- 
solves itself into a very ordinary drama of seduc- 
tion, of murder, of sorrow, and of most tragic issue. 
Place the Evil One ostensibly in action among the 
mortals, and the drama acquires a weird and deeper 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 235 

meaning — a strange, supernatural influence. How 
shall the poet conceive and depict this mysterious, 
this terrible Spirit of Evil ? That which the poet's 
imagination can body forth must be received through 
the imagination of reader or of spectator. It is diffi- 
cult to conceive a more difficult imaginative task 
than that of placing Satan on the stage. How shall 
the dramatist make such a being speak ? — how shall 
he depict the dark Spirit of Evil, the antagonist of 
goodness and of God, assuming human conditions 
and mortal limits ? Were not this high problem so 
nobly solved by Goethe, we should be inclined to 
hold it to be impossible. In Goethe's Faust the 
fiend does not appear, as he does in Marlowe's 
Faustus, as a mere conjuror, a slave of the ring, 
who can be called upon at any moment to perform 
wonderful, if sometimes childish, tasks. No ; the 
Mephistopheles creation of great Goethe is touched 
to finer issues, and appears for quite other purposes. 
The mystery of the great — the perhaps apparent 
only, but yet immortal — conflict between Good and 
Evil has to be indicated, not dogmatically or doc- 
trinally, but imaginatively, and as it can be conceived 
by the free and holy spirit of man. In that fine air 
of spiritual thought which outsoars all the churches, 
and extends above all the steeples, must the poet 
work who will deal adequately and nobly with the 
Faust legend. There was but one poet who, quali- 
fied by very many concurrent circumstances, could 



2$6 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

discharge the high task ; and that poet was 
Goethe. 

Small wonder that the completion of a drama orr 
this infinite subject should spread over years, long 
as well as very many, of the great poet's life. He 
was not in any hurry to complete a work which 
even he could scarcely exhaust. 

A little careful analysis will show how wonder- 
fully Goethe has managed the apparently insuper- 
able difficulty of making Mephistopheles fitly talk. 
The poet must indicate that the unearthly talker 
knows more than man can know of the deepest 
secrets of the universe ; and yet Mephistopheles does 
not need, or wish, to tell all that he knows ; he un- 
folds only so much as is necessary to lead and ta 
mislead Faust and the other characters ; though at 
times the fiend speaks as if half thinking his own 
thought aloud, while on other occasions — as, for in- 
stance, with Marthe and with the student — he speaks 
in order to indulge his irrepressible, grim, hellish,, 
gross, cynical, bitter humour. Goethe had, of neces- 
sity, to make his Devil very like a man. If the fiend 
were absent from the drama, the action would have 
the same issue ; but with the very fiend upon the 
scene, the spectator is subjected to the weird fasci- 
nation of seeing the process by means of which the 
end is to be brought about. Goethe believed in ' the 
shows of evil ; ' he conceived that the good, that the 
Deity, was omnipotent and supreme ; and that evil,. 



FACTS AND FANXIES ABOUT FAUST. 237 

instead of being a rival power, was only an influ- 
ence tolerated and used by divinity to work out 
divine ends. Hence, he draws Mephisto as a Geist 
der stets verneint ; as a spirit working vainly, always 
labouring for evil, and yet controlled by a higher 
power, and always involuntarily working for good — 
a conception which may be theologically wrong, but 
is yet possibly divinely true. 

Goethe's Faust, as he wrote it, is more than a 
■drama ; not less than a drama ; it is never undra- 
matic. The dramatic poem, which deals with such 
great argument, includes a drama within its larger 
limit. No great Regisseur — no Tieck or Klinge- 
mann — would find any difficulty in compressing 
action, poetry, and event into the practical stage 
scope of an acting drama. A work purely or merely 
a dramatic poem is not necessarily a drama. It may 
contain no moral conflict, no tragic collision with 
fate, no action, and no event which springs from 
dramatic attrition ; but Goethe's Faust contains all 
dramatic elements, and, as a tragedy half super- 
natural, half human, it remains ' sad, high, and 
working.' 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT 
FA UST — Continued. 

II. — The Poem and the Poet. 

/^ARLYLE says, finely, ' Goethe's poetry is no 
separate faculty, no mental handicraft ; but the 
voice of the whole harmonious manhood ; nay, it is 
the very harmony, the living and life-giving har- 
mony of that rich manhood which forms his poetry/ 
This saying applies strongly to his Faust. With 
Goethe the ideal is always based upon the real ; 
the bases of his imaginings are his life experiences. 
We know, happily, so much about Goethe, that 
we can trace, through his creations, his profound- 
est convictions and views of life. A knowledge of 
Goethe's biography, correspondence, and, especially, 
of his autobiography, enables us to follow, through 
Faust, his changing and growing opinions — to study 
some of his life events and his mental progress. 
Would that we could know as much of Shakspeare \ 
But the personality of our great poet is shrouded in 
his works. Of Goethe we may say, ( His thoughts 
are very deep.' Apart even from poetry, and from 
drama, there is, in Faust, always a spiritual atmo- 
sphere of the very loftiest thought that is within the 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 239 

reaches of the soul of man ; a deep .criticism of life 
which does not disturb, but which does elevate alike 
poetical creation and dramatic vitality. In Goethe's 
work there is nothing strenuous ; no evidence of effort 
or of labour ; all seems to have grown as a result of 
god-like ease and spontaneity of production. His 
bold, high, sometimes wild, but always regally domi- 
nated imagination works ever in free fantasy and 
large conception. His profound striving to penetrate 
the mystery of Existence is embodied in purposeful 
and winged words, furnishing to his nation quotations 
which form a part of thought and life. Clearness of 
vision and spiritual insight, together with working 
imagination, are among his special attributes. Humour 
he has, but it is attended with one peculiarity — it is 
humour which extends just so far as it is needed by 
his art purpose, but never goes beyond that limit. 
There is, in Goethe, nothing of the frolic fun of 
humour enjoyed for its own irresistible sake by a 
born humorist ; nothing of Shakspeare's revelry of 
joy in pure humour. Goethe has it at command for 
a needful purpose, as, for instance, for the scene be- 
tween Mephistopheles and Mistress Marthe Schwerdt- 
lein ; but he uses it only for his needs, and, indeed, 
employs it with a certain coy reticence. He loves 
earnestness better than sportiveness ; he thinks all 
thought rather through gravity than through humour. 
Life is, to him, in the main, wholly serious. All its 
sides do not strike upon his mind with the equal force 



240 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

with which they press upon the full-orbed, every-sided 
mind of Shakspeare. It would be a mistake to ex- 
pect fun, or more than a stately mirth, from Jupiter ; 
and analysis demands from every man that only 
which he can give. 

Despite some high labour — notably that highest of 
Carlyle — it cannot yet be said that the full significance 
and value of Goethe are adequately recognised in 
England. He has been dealt with in part by such 
dull commentators that his true image has been all 
obscured ; as the noblest face seems distorted when it 
is reflected in a spoon. Great art reveals no secrets 
except to labour of great thought ; and it must be 
long before Goethe can become — if he ever should 
become — popular in England. His own height stands 
in'his way. You might as well blame a weak man 
for not having been up the Matterhorn, as blame him 
for not understanding Goethe ; it is not given to all 
to ascend such ideal altitudes. 

Goethe's infinite dramatic poem of Faust, the 
writing of which spread itself slowly over a period 
of some thirty years, was first printed in 1806. It 
was the only one of his many works over which he 
lingered long ; he could not hurry the completion 
of a poem on a quite infinite subject. Faust is, 
indeed, a subject singularly suited to the genius of 
Goethe. The fulness of meaning in the great 
Christian my thus had a rare attraction for his mag- 
nanimous intellect and wonder-working imagination. 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 24I 

The symbolism involved in the magic fable enabled 
him to render every line pregnant with meaning ; 
the high, abstract spirit of the legend gave him 
scope for painting things divine, daemonic, human. 
The theme was worthy of the work ; the work was 
commensurate with the theme. Into it he could 
pour all his thoughts, all his theories, all his wisdom, 
all his experiences. Faust may be said to have 
been commenced with Werther; but the execution 
of Faust outgrew the phase of mind, the Zeitkolorit, 
of that fervid, but feverish frenzy of morbid youth 
which summed up and exhausted the mental disease 
of a sickly time in Werther. Faust survived into 
his later and his riper years, and includes all that 
even Goethe felt, and thought, and knew. Hamlet 
was, so far as we know, produced with no more 
length of labour, with no greater expenditure of 
time, than were occupied by any of the other works 
of Shakspeare. Goethe lingered long and lovingly 
over the great work which is his masterpiece; and 
worked at Faust as he worked upon no other of his 
poems or his dramas. 

The origin and the growth of Goethe's Faust, the 
time at which he first conceived the play, and the 
different dates at which he executed it, are assuredly 
subjects of literary interest, if not of great literary 
importance. It is enough to possess such a work in 
its entirety; the desire to know the dates and the 
progress of completion, involves questions which may 

Q 



242 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

easily be considered a little too curiously ; and this 
is more especially the case because the evidence, 
mostly circumstantial, is mainly defective. Still, 
German Griindlichkeit has laboured assiduously in 
this field of inquiry ; though the results, to quote 
Sheridan's old joke, are voluminous rather than 
luminous. Wilhelm Scherer, in his ( Aus Goethe's 
Friihzeit,' is the latest labourer in this highly specu- 
lative region of research. His conjectures are many, 
his discoveries few ; but it is yet possible to glean 
some suggestions of interesting probabilities — nay, 
even some sure facts, from his inquiries. I pass 
over, as scarcely worth much attention, the thin and 
windy theories which would seek to indicate that 
Herder was the original of Mephisto — or of the 
Erdgeist. Herr Scherer admits that the problem 
of the growth of Faust is one that can never be 
solved. Asking only, in passing, Why should it 
be solved ? — I shall cite here those few facts in 
connexion with the subject which seem to be estab- 
lished without much room for doubt by Herr Scherer 
and by others. 

Goethe himself says that Faust entstand mit dem 
Werther ; was planned at the same time as was his 
early romance — that is, his Faust was first contem- 
plated when he was a little over twenty years of 
age. Indeed, the subject is alluded to in a manner 
which shows that he was then thinking of it, in 
the Mitschuldigen, the work of a youth of eighteen. 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 243 

From Loeper's Laroche Correspondenz it would seem 
that a sketch of Faust, in prose, was made in the 
winter of 1771-72 ; and this prose sketch served as 
the basis of a poetical version begun after 1773. 
The last scene but two, Truber Tag, Feld — still 
remains in prose; and Schiller (May 8, 1798) records 
that Goethe had said that the execution of certain 
scenes, in prose, was powerfully moving, gezvaltsam 
angreifend. Among the side lights thrown upon the 
subject is an allusion by Wieland (Nov. 12, 1796) to 
the fact that Goethe had suppressed some inter- 
esting scenes — notably one in which Faust became 
so furious (probably when he discovered the incar- 
ceration of Gretchen) that he intimidated Mephis- 
topheles. Gotter says that Goethe was at work on 
Faust in Wetzlar, at the period of his love romance 
with Lotte. In completing his design, Goethe has 
let certain of his original intentions drop away ; for 
instance, Gretchen was to have wandered with her 
child in misery over the earth, until, in her insanity, 
she destroyed it. Another abandoned project was 
one of a great public disputation, in which Mephis- 
topheles, as a wandering student, was to have taken 
a characteristic part. In 1800, Goethe wrote to 
Schiller that he hoped the great disputation scene 
would soon be finished. In 1790 was completed that 
version of Faust now known in German literature as 
' the Fragment' 

In January or February 1775, Goethe read his 



244 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Faust, as it then existed, to Jacobi, who noticed but 
little difference between that version and the fragment 
of 1790. In 1774, Goethe read Faust to Heinrich 
Leopold Wagner. The heroine was then named 
Eva. Her name became Margarethe and Margret- 
lein. Gretchen was the latest of the names chosen. 
In 1776, Goethe speaks of a conception of Helena — 
a conception reserved for the second part. Theod. 
Mommsen expresses an opinion that the early prose 
version still shows through the later poetical form. 
On March 1, 1788, Goethe writes to Herder that he 
had found the old thread of Faust, and had completed 
his scheme of the tragedy. In 1777, Goethe visited 
the Hartz country, and his acquaintance with those 
mountains is evidenced in the Walpurgis Nacht. In 
1789, Goethe writes to the Duke that he will produce 
Faust as it stands, as a fragment. He adds that the 
poem is, in a certain sense, finished for the time. 
Hence the fragment of 1790. The latest entry in this- 
chronology is * the first part of Faust completed ' in 
1806. It seems that the witch struck off from Faust 
the burden of thirty years ; so that we may assume him 
to be fifty-five when a sage, twenty-five when a lover. 
Goethe takes an optimistic view of evil ; but as the 
play progressed, the strength of the old tradition 
moulded the treatment of the modern poet, and he 
introduces Mephisto's proposal for a compact to be 
signed with blood. The peaks of the highest moun- 
tains seem, at night, to blend with the stars, and 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 245 

Goethe's pure ideas rise to the divine ; but yet the 
fascination to the imagination of the old wonder- 
legend exercised a strong influence over his dramatic 
•conception and art treatment. Dropped threads of 
his early plan, with their ends loose, are sometimes 
left in his completed work. 

In the poem itself, the legend of Faust is decided 
upon, as the subject of a drama, in that prologue 
which depicts a debate between a theatre director, a 
theatre poet, and a clown. This deeply, sadly humor- 
ous prologue paints the never-ending quarrel between 
poets and the traders in poetry — a dispute in which a 
Merry Andrew can act as mediator — and is written 
with a humour strictly subordinated to its immediate 
purpose, and with all the sadness of thoughtful satire. 
Goethe recognises the lets and hindrances which 
hamper the free activity of the poet, and yet shows 
that the great poet must and can do his work, despite 
of all the limitations and difficulties which a theatre, 
a director, and a mixed public can throw in the poet's 
way. In spite of a public which desires only to be 
amused, it is yet possible to deal highly with the 
high theme of a noble, erring soul to be led, if that 
may be, Von Himmel durch die Welt zur Nolle. 
Poets do their work through a Spartan training. 
Earnest effort will, in the end, overcome ; but no 
effort will be wanting on the part of enmity and 
ignorance to thwart and to oppose the owner of the 
God-like gift. 



246 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Goethe first speaks in his own person, in that match- 
less, that grandly pathetic Zueignung, or Dedication y 
in which the old man, putting forth his life's highest 
work to a generation unborn when first he sang, ex- 
presses heroic tenderness without a weakling's senti- 
mentalism. After the Theatre Prologue comes one 
in heaven, in which, following the opening of the 
Book of Job, Goethe uses the quaint naivete 'of medi- 
aeval conception, in order to lay the frame-work of his 
Divina Commedia. But all prologue ceases, and, with 
our thoughts full of the mediaeval legend, and of the 
permitted experiment of the Evil One, the curtain 
draws up on the drama of Faust. 

Many will probably recollect the emotion with 
which they saw, for the first time, in some German 
theatre, the curtain rise and disclose the first scene in 
Goethe's Faust. 

In the narrow, high, Gothic chamber, surrounded 
by books, parchments, skeletons, crucibles, retorts, 
sits the bowed, worn, prematurely old sage ; and the 
great void space of the theatre becomes filled with 
the grand declamatory roll of the majestic opening 
soliloquy. The dark, bearded figure of the life-worn 
philosopher, who has learned so bitterly that great 
knowledge is great sorrow, becomes a possession of 
the mind — a picture fixed in the imagination. The 
play opens on the eve of Easter Day, and the sad 
moon shines in through stained glass upon the 
student's solitary study. Faust's state of mind, or 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 247 

soul, presents to us a spiritual tragedy. His unhap- 
piness is the result of individual dissatisfaction with 
life. His is the sublime egotism of a scholar, a 
striver, a thinker, who has exhausted knowledge, but 
missed all happiness. For him the light of the lamp 
has replaced the light of heaven. He has turned his 
back upon the light, and has made his path of life 
very dark by projecting on to it his own shadow. In 
his passionate despair he yet yearns madly for truth, 
and thirsts for fuller knowledge. His recourse to 
magic is an attempt to reach heaven through hell. 
He turns to diabolic science in order to attain to 
divine light. Aspiring and inquiring, half mad with 
longing, wholly desperate with doubt — sublime, if 
passionate error impels him into a cavern to seek for 
light — drives him into darkness with a glass to see his 
face. The moonbeams make warm gules upon the 
haggard features and bent figure of the old, life- 
weary student. As the morning — the morning of 
Easter Day — greys upon the long vigil of the philo- 
sopher, he attempts suicide ; but the heavenly tones 
of the Easter hymn, with all the memories of child- 
hood, of prayer, and of youth, arrest the impious 
hand. His tears flow, and earth reclaims her son. 

In all the early stages of Faust, Goethe has used 
the suggestions — not reproduced the detail — of his 
own youth's experience. He, too, had pushed know- 
ledge beyond ordinary human limits ; he, too, had 
pined with that sad, high, longing discontent of great 



248 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

and ardent souls, that cannot find in life all that the 
mind can desire. He knew the unsatisfied desires, 
the satiety of learning ; and he, too, had learned how 
grey is all theory, and how green alone the golden 
tree of life. But Goethe remembered and used, 
though he had long outlived, the feverish discontents 
of youth. He himself never succumbed to despair. 
A strong man, he turned his weakness into strength ; 
calmly victorious, he survived into peace and light. 
He, too, turned to magic ; but his magic was divine, 
and not daemonic. When, in his Werther days, the 
echo of Jerusalem's pistol sounded through the void 
heart, the unsatisfied soul, the mock hysterical passion 
of his brain-sickly time of temporary fever and unrest, 
Goethe, too, had once contemplated suicide. Basing 
his only half-sincere plan of operations upon the 
example of the Emperor Otho, he placed, every night, 
a sharp dagger by his bedside. Finding, however, 
after one or two slight trials, that he lacked resolution 
to drive the keen steel even a little way into his breast, 
young Goethe relinquished the idea of suicide — nay, 
parted with it even in laughter. To many human 
beings the sorrows of life are so many, and so heavy, 
that, but for the Hamlet dread and doubt, the earth 
would be strewn with suicides ; especially in those 
times over which a wave of morbid feeling passes. 
Men shrink from the great and dread Unknown ; 
from the dreams that may come in that sleep of 
death ; and thus remain bound and confined to the 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 249 

ills they know of — ills which, though often almost 
unbearable, seem to the haggard imagination better 
than the awful and terrible vagueness of the possi- 
bilities that surround death. The dread of death 
does much to keep men in life. 

It is characteristic of Goethe that he draws Faust as 
always proud of his own image of the Godhead ; that 
he depicts his philosopher scornfully confronting 
spirits and demons with a haughty assumption of 
being their peer, if not their superior. Goethe's own 
residence as a student in Leipzig had made him well 
acquainted with the Auerbach Keller ; his own ex- 
perience had taught him a contempt for the barren 
pedantry of University teaching, and for the waste 
•studies of so many ingenuous young souls. His own 
repugnance to jurisprudence is amply recorded by 
himself. Indeed, his experience shines through Wag- 
ner, through the student, through the mock professor- 
ship of mocking Mephistopheles. Goethe records, in 
his own account of his own University career, — ' In 
logic it struck me as strange that I was, in order 
to perceive the proper use of them, to pull to pieces, 
dismember, and, as it were, destroy those very opera- 
tions of the mind which I had gone through with the 
greatest ease from my youth.' 

Through the whole tragedy of Faust shines a deep 
and distinctive doctrine which Goethe held firmly — 
I mean his belief in the ultimate supremacy of Good. 
He did not believe in Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, in two 



250 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

equally powerful potentates, two spirits of the same 
might, one good, one evil, between which the ulti- 
mate issue of the perpetual struggle is uncertain* 
Goethe believed supremely in the entire supremacy of 
God ; he held that the shows of evil do but subserve 
the higher purposes of divine beneficence. The 
spirit that always wills, and always works for evil r 
is, as Goethe teaches, always guided and moulded by 
a Supreme Power, so that its strivings for evil are 
mainly futile ; and rough-hewn to harm, are, never- 
theless, ultimately shaped by God to good. Thus,, 
the seeming victory of Mephistopheles is barren after 
all — Gretchen and Faust seem, but are not, lost and 
ruined. They are ultimately snatched from the 
fiend's grasp ; though ill deeds and impious longings 
are expiated in time by sore sufferings on earth. 
Mephistopheles is, unconsciously, but a tool in the 
hand of the divine ; he walks in a vain shadow, dis- 
quiets himself without result — except in so far as 
he serves divine purposes — and remains, at last, a 
fooled and baffled fiend. In Goethe's conviction an 
Omnipotent and All- wise God lives and reigns ; and 
this conviction is shown through all the scheme and 
action of his Faust. Goethe's Mephistopheles, his 
' Squire Satan ' (der Junker Satan), is surely one of 
the supreme products of art ; and in nothing that 
he has done, has he shown more clearly his spiritual 
depth of insight. Mephisto gives but a hint, or 
glimpse, of revelation of things outside human scope 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 251 

and knowledge ; but that hint and glimpse he gives, 

and gives most wonderfully. The fiend does not wish 

to tell all he knows ; he says only so much in that 

sort as is necessary to impress and to mislead Faust ; 

though, at times, by rare pregnant suggestion, he 

speaks half as if he were thinking his own thought 

aloud. The fiend is constantly conscious of the 

supremacy of Deity. The spirit of denial, he knows 

that he works for good, while always scheming evil. 

He tells Faust — 

Trust one of us ; this whole of life 
Is made but for a God alone. 

At other times — as in the scenes with Marthe and 
with the student — he cannot restrain his own grim, 
hellish, cynical humour; he indulges his savage, gross 
devilish bitterness, his sneering, withering mockery 
and irony. Always, reader and spectator have before 
them, through Goethe's magic art, the image of an 
infra-human, super-human being. In the beginning, 
light itself created, or evolved, its own shadow — dark- 
ness ; and of that mystically created darkness Mephis- 
topheles is a part. 

Faust sought the stupefaction of doubt ; distraction 
from vain inquiry — and, hence, he summoned up the 
fiend. His early passion for knowledge was incap- 
able of being converted into action, was impotent to 
yield the joys of sense and of life. When magi- 
cally restored to youth and love, the Titan — the 
stormer of the skies — is reduced to an ordinary 



252 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

earthly lover, though plunged into a love which, 
under devils' guidance, could only throb with lust, 
could only lead to misery and crime. In Faust's 
devil-guided passion, Gretchen reigns like a fever in 
his blood. She, when she yields to temptation, illus- 
trates Shakspeare's saying, — 

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 

It is devils' work to lower love to lust. It is note- 
worthy that Faust, when making his compact with 
the devil, does not believe in continuance of sensual, 
or of any other delight. He says, — 

When, to the moment fleeting past 

I cry, ( Oh stay ! thou art so fair ; 7 
Then let your chains be round me cast. 

Resolved no longer upon the torture of the mind to 
lie in restless ecstasy, but, in the hope of relief, to 
plunge into the joy and woe of life, Faust does not 
even then believe in the possibility of real happiness. 
The old impulse toward the divine is still left in his 
breast, but is left vague ; and all his wisdom will soon 
pale before a glance of Gretchen's eyes. The scenes 
in the tragedy follow in a somewhat loose order, and 
great spaces of time are overleaped without reference 
to them. Thus, we know nothing of Gretchen's child 
until we learn that she has murdered it. Goethe's 
large, inexplicable art is rather pregnant with mystic 
suggestion than precise in careful arrangement of 
realistic construction ; we must piece out with our 
imaginations the wild sequence of an unearthly story. 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 253 

The tragedy is born of that balance of uncommon 
qualities which forms the divinity of genius. 

There is noticeable a certain levity in Goethe's 
treatment of the character of Mephistopheles ; a 
levity which would assuredly not be found if Goethe 
had believed in the success of evil. But he seems to 
regard the Evil One with a certain sarcastic scorn ; 
with a conviction that the restless labours of the devil 
are futile as impotent. He is full of the belief in the 
ultimate triumph of enduring Good. Hence it is that, 
in the drama, der Herr allows Satan to try his best to 
mislead and ruin Faust ; the Lord adding, that the 
demon will stand abashed at the futility of his at- 
tempt to utterly ruin a man to whom, in spite of 
wildest errors, the way of righteousness is known. 
Mephistopheles admits to Faust that, despite his long 
and ceaseless labours, he is sometimes in despair at 
the smallness of the results he can produce ; and 
Faust recognises, in his hour of most desperate mad- 
ness, that the Evil One wages fruitless and hopeless 
war against the source of life and light. Goethe is 
not didactic ; he never distinctly preaches his theory ; 
but until we really understand the profound convic- 
tion as to the comparative power and influence of 
Evil and of Good which Goethe shows throughout 
the whole poem, we shall miss that great leading 
idea which lies at the root of all his wonderful treat- 
ment of a theme so complex and so high. Mephisto- 
pheles can, and does, bring about most damnable 



254 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

mischief, woe, and wrong. Thus, to take a few in- 
stances, he transmutes the duel with Valentine into a 
murder, and causes the hue and cry of the Blood-Ban 
to be raised against Faust : his devilish arts bring 
about that which Faust alone could hardly have 
compassed— the seduction of Gretchen ; he gives to 
Gretchen that sleeping draught which poisons the 
mother ; he drives her to madness with the mocking 
tones of an Evil Spirit, which sneer down her faith, 
even when she bends in prayer in the cathedral. He 
impels her to the murder of her infant ; and he leaves 
her, in the insanity of sorrow, on that night in prison 
which is to lead to her last morning on the scaffold. 
Of all this woe, he tells Faust nothing ; and few 
things in this great play are dramatically finer than 
the cold, devilish indifference with which he replies 
to Faust's frenzied reproaches that ' She is not the 
first/ ' Sie ist die Erste nicht.' 

Gretchen was the name of Goethe's first love ; and 
the memory of the early, youthful passion survives 
in the dear, caressing, diminutive of the name of 
Margaret. In his Gretchen, Goethe has created one 
of the loveliest, sweetest, saddest women of all poetry. 
She is divinely and humanly woman. She is not a 
bundle of attributes ; but a living, individual, most 
human girl — born for love, driven to crime, doomed 
to sorrow. When first we see her, coming out of 
the Gothic cathedral, she is pious, innocent, pure, 
tender ; and yet with the simple wiles, the instinc- 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 255 

tive coquetry, the femine modesty, the little maidenly 
vanities of her sex, her age, her time. Every man 
could love, no man — unless moved by the devil — 
would wrong Gretchen. Faust had sought the fiend ; 
Gretchen would never, of her own free will, have 
come to him ; indeed, she instinctively shuns and 
loathes Mephistopheles — nor w 7 ould the demon have 
had such power over her but for the fatal love of 
Faust. Mephisto's vain venom, but for her hapless 
love, would have hurt her no more than the viper 
•could hurt St Paul. When first Faust urges the 
•demon to gain Gretchen for him, Mephistopheles has 
to confess that he has no power over her. Goethe has 
used the mediaeval respect for rank w r hen he shows how 
the simple burgher maiden felt flattered by the atten- 
tions of a cavalier of noble house. Marthe is a woman 

designed express 
For go-between and procuress ; 

and she is a tool ready to the demon's hands. Out 
of Gretchen's own goodness the fiend makes a net to 
enmesh her. Until her vanity is corrupted by the 
jewels, his devilish arts have no success; but she 
yields to the gauds of the tempter. The trials of 
her virtue — trials both human and infra-human — 
are too strong for her ; she loves, she gives place to 
the devil, and she falls. One of the best and purest 
of women succumbs piteously to the powers of hell. 
Her fate forms the human tragedy of the drama. In 
the opening of the play we see that spiritual tragedy 



256 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

of Faust's restless soul which leads to the compact 
with the Evil One ; in the later scenes we have the 
more human tragedy of the love and fate of Gretchen. 
The sage has become lover — a depraved lover only 
— earthly, sensual, devilish. In Gretchen's fond arms r 
Faust might have hoped for the moment in which 
he could have cried, — 

Oh stay : thou art so fair ; 

but the demon who impels while he ensnares, who 
seems to serve only that he may destroy, is in- 
capable of loyalty to his own victim, of fidelity to 
his own bargain. He^ can give ignoble delight, but 
he cannot, if he would, give happiness, or peace, or 
rest — even in love. Faust, still the half-god, has 
only deadened a conscience which he cannot destroy. 
He is capable of remorse — he cannot shut out pity. 
Hurried along the infernal path, he obtains his de~ 
sires only to ensure his misery. 

To our human ken, Mephistopheles seems to do- 
much that is against his own interest ; but we must 
remember Goethe's theory, that he is only the tool of 
a Higher Power by which he is constantly befooled. 
Again, we must not forget that his supernatural 
knowledge is a key to much that he does which 
seems unwise — that is, unwise as regards his own 
purposes. Faust is disgusted in the Auerbach Keller,. 
but the demon desired to lead the soaring soul down- 
ward to gross and sensual evil through a preliminary 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 257 

stage of flat common-place unmeaningness. Faust 
resembles a flying fish ; his aerial, heavenward flight 
soon subsides into a return to his more native ele- 
ment. There is, in Goethe, nowhere that attenuated 
thread of inspiration which is like a waterfall in a 
dry summer ; he is always full, and always full of 
meaning. It might seem to us that Mephistopheles 
was thwarting his own ends by transmuting Faust's 
amour to utter misery ; but the fiend had more to 
hope from Faust's despair and desperation than from 
his contentment and enjoyment ; and then Mephis- 
topheles took a joy in human suffering. Things 
that happen off the scene are often merely suggested. 
The art difficulties in the way of picturing ostensible 
daemonic interference in human affairs are immense ; 
and if we are puzzled at times on the surface, we 
always find that Goethe is right in the depths. 

The mind lingers with a strange emotion — half 
of delight, half of sorrow — over Goethe's immortal 
creation of dear, unhappy Gretchen. Halb Gott, halb 
Kind im Herzen y she is one of the women of fiction 
who lay hold so strongly of our imaginations, of our 
sympathies. Her sweet, simple, loving nature ; her 
childlike naivete and trust ; her holy innocence, which 
knows no bashful cunning ; her irresistible maiden 
coquetry, based only upon instinct — all these qualities 
are fused into a pure and perfect character, which is 
one of the glories and the charms of great art. Be- 
hind the seduction glares the cold, filthy grin of 

R 



258 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

the infra-human Mephistopheles ; both Gretchen and 
Faust are impelled to sweet sin mit dem Teufel im 
Leibe. 

The sin of Faust and Gretchen arises from demo- 
niacal possession. Gretchen never wholly loses our 
respect ; and then her error is atoned for by such deep 
sorrows ! When shame and remorse begin in her 
sweet soul the Nemesis of wrong, she can yet say, — 

Doch — alles was dazu mich trieb, 
Gott ! war so gut ! ach war so lieb ! 

She confesses to her lover that she was very angry 
with herself because she was not more angry with 
him for having accosted her. Who forgets her play- 
ful, childishly superstitious flower-test of love, as she 
plucks off leaf after leaf of the daisy, murmuring — 
' He loves me — loves me not ' ? Compare that 
moment with the anguish of her bitter prayer in the 
Z winger to the picture of the Mater dolorosa. What 
a dramatic poem is that in the garden, when cavalier- 
like Faust and fair Gretchen, Mephistopheles and 
Marthe, in alternate couples, pass and repass across 
the working scene ! What simple, pious goodness 
in the girl's tender concern for the soul of the man 
she loves, when, in Marthe's garden, she questions 
Faust — 

Nun sag, wie hast du's mit der Religion ? 

and how characteristic is the reply of the lover- 
philosopher ! Faust's early belief has been turned 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 259 

to mist by devilish obscuration, and yet, in her 
presence, he who once was an Hoffnnng reicJi, im 
G/a?tben /est, returns to a faith vital, though obscured 
by the phraseology of philosophy. Note, too, that 
•Faust declares his love through his vaguely lofty 
theological profession. Men have often more faith, 
and a deeper faith, than they themselves know of. 
In action, in passion, in error, a faith seems dead 
which is only sleeping. There can be no victory 
without battle. ' Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht, den 
konnen wir erlosen.' In the wild anguish with which 
Faust learns that Gretchen lies in the dungeon which 
is the porch to the scaffold, he once more addresses 
direct and burning prayer to the Deity from whom he 
had strayed so far — whom he had so long forgotten. 

In that terrible, most moving dungeon scene, 
Goethe rises to the very summit of his tragedy. In 
the insanity of great sorrow, poor Gretchen awaits in 
the dark prison cell the morrow that shall lead her to 
the scaffold. When Faust enters to save her, her 
wandering senses can only recognise him by snatches 
made up of half memories of their old, their fatal 
love. She cannot be moved to fly with him. There 
are, in this scene, touches of pathos that lie too deep 
for tears. In the madness of her agony, Gretchen 
can only remember — she cannot act. In her joy at 
seeing Faust, her warped senses lead her to pray him 
to stop with her — not to take her away : then she 
urges that he cannot know that he seeks to free a 



260 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

criminal who has murdered her mother, drowned her 
child. Her thought changes, and she next insists 
that he shall survive in order to provide the graves of 
herself, of her brother, of her mother, and of their 
child. Surely her thought for these graves has rarely 
been surpassed in pathos — 

The best place you must give my mother, 

And close beside her lay my brother ; 

Lay me a little way apart, 

But not too far off ! 

On my right breast the little one. 

The scene of agony and anguish is ended by the 
appearance of Mephistopheles. Gretchen calls upon 
her Heavenly Father, upon the serried ranks of holy 
angels, to preserve her from the Evil One. She 
trembles at last, not for herself, but for her lover.. 
As her soul flies, the fiend exclaims, exultingly,— 

( She is doomed ! ' 

But a voice from heaven says that she 

' Is saved ! ' 

And another voice, from within — perhaps the voice 
of Gretchen on her heavenward flight — exclaims, in 
tones that die away in distance, — 

* Heinrich ! Heinrich ! ' 

Faust disappears with Mephistopheles ; his fate is 
left in more doubt, but this is explained partially by 
the fact that he is reserved for a second part ; in which, 
in some imaginary higher sphere, he will not love and 
ruin a human-hearted, warm-kissing Gretchen, but 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 26 1 

will worship in another sense than that of the senses, 
that Helena of Greece, that 

. . . face that launched a thousand ships, 
And burnt the topmost towers of Ilium. 

At the end, the vain fiend, Mephistopheles, is 
baffled and befooled ; and the Enduring Good reigns 
for ever over all. 

The romantic and picturesque side of this great 
drama is a thing to be noted with delight. Both 
persons and scenes are in the highest degree pic- 
turesque and romantic. The costume is that of the 
sixteenth century ; the architecture is of the same, or 
of yet earlier times. The two chief figures of Faust 
and Mephistopheles — a pair as well known in art as 
are Dante and Virgil — are of most picturesque pre- 
sence. The old Gothic chamber of the student sage, 
with its olden furniture, inherited from ancestors, is 
singularly striking and charming. Take, again, the 
spring walk of pedant and of sage — of Wagner and 
of Faust — ' outside the gate ' of the mediaeval city, of 
some antique Niirnberg, Frankfort, Hildesheim, 
Leipzig, Luneberg. They pass through the close 
streets of olden houses within the narrow limits of 
the walled town ; they pass the great open porch of 
the Gothic cathedral in which Gretchen prayed and 
worshipped ; they pass through the city gate, with 
portcullis, probably with drawbridge, and issue into 
the open country which surrounds the quaint dwelling- 
place of thickly clustered men. They look back 



262 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

upon the armed town, with its towers, roofs, gables r 
spires, houses. It is a return, with the bud-bursting 
opening of the year, to Nature and to life ; the snows,, 
and ice, and frosts of winter are melting and dis- 
appearing before the gentle breath of hope-giving,, 
life-bearing spring. The gay and active crowd of 
ordinary men and women, bent on the common-place 
holiday enjoyments of dancing, drinking, joyous love- 
making, pass by and talk and walk beside the two 
philosophers. - Note that Wagner is not a particularly 
stupid man. Goethe's art was too fine to make him 
that. He is more learned, and as intelligent as is the 
mass of his compeers ; he is the dried, pedantic pro- 
duct of that University professorship which puts on 
so many coals that the fire cannot burn ; which heaps 
up so much learning — not necessarily knowledge 
— that the mind is stifled. Goethe had known, in 
his University career, many a Wagner, and many 
a student. He knew too, well, what a Voltairian 
demon would have to say of the course of study, of 
the choice of a * faculty/ The whole drama, in its 
essence, as in its surroundings, is instinct with the 
romantic and the picturesque, and yet it is classical ; 
for has not Goethe said that everything which is of 
the highest order of merit is classical? Gretchen, 
also, in the street, at the well, in the garden, at her 
spinning-wheel, in the cathedral — nay, even in the 
dungeon — is a most quaint, lovely, archaeological girl 
figure. The black horses sweep by the ghastly 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. 263 

Rabenstein ; the witch's kitchen, with its baser magic 
and its filthy apes, is a daemonic picture ; and the 
magic mirror, in which Faust first sees the fair image 
of Gretchen, replaces the foul wall of the fiend-kitchen 
by an illusion of beauty and of charm. In short, 
there is, all through, and all round the drama of 
Faust, that picturesque, objective delight w r hich the 
genius of Goethe's partly Gothic imagination knew 
so well how to employ for our enjoyment. We are 
fascinated by the surroundings, as by the essence of 
the great Northern tragedy. 

In that witch's kitchen a magic draught restores to 
Faust his youth, and transforms him into the splen- 
didly attired, handsome cavalier of the sixteenth 
century. It is noteworthy that when the fiend 
assumes human shape he cannot be beautiful. The 
Gothic fantasy, so much gloomier in its dark, spec- 
tral north than was the Greek imagination, depicted 
Satan, in the middle ages, as a dusky, terrible 
phantom with horns, and claws, and tail. Mephisto- 
pheles is too modern in spirit for such old-fashioned 
horrors. He appears as a cavalier, as a Herr Baron, 
but, in deference to tradition, he retains the red 
doublet, hose, and cloak, the cock's feather, and the 
long rapier. When well made up, Mephistopheles is 
certainly one of the most striking apparitions that the 
stage can show.* 

* Red is the old German colour of the devil, and is worn by 
Zamiel, as well as by Mephisto. 



264 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC 

The profound meanings of this poem do not injure 
the workings of the drama ; so deeply is meaning 
expressed through action. Faust remains, in one 
respect, a puppet-play ; the characters are all Marion- 
etti, which are seen moving and acting in the light 
of a Divine Idea, which shines behind and through 
all appearance. The high, inscrutable designs of 
deity are always suggested. Faust was a professor 
of science, not of art ; he acquired knowledge, but 
did not create beauty. His strivings represented only 
one phase of human mental activity. He forgot a 
God who did not forget him. Even in his fall, his 
flashes of proud, divine manhood are unspeakably 
noble ; they are God-descended. Goethe uses no 
scalpel to discover a soul by means of the dissection 
of a body. His art is always spiritual. If stained 
glass be well-coloured, no spectator regards the in- 
trinsic quality of the glass itself; but in this play of 
Faust the noble colouring covers the finest material ; 
subject and treatment are co-equal. We have the 
best glass most nobly stained and richly dight. Byron 
says, finely — 

The Devil speaks truth much oftener than he's deemed ; 
He hath an ignorant audience ; 

and Goethe admired and praised our poet's pregnant 
saying. 

Here we conclude our attempt to measure the 
incommensurable : here we cease, for the present, to 
try farther to pluck out the heart of the mystery of 



FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. ' 265 

Goethe's ' mystic, unfathomable song ' of Faust. We 
shall not have exhausted an infinite subject ; we shall 
not have completed our study of a theme which, like 
all things divine and high, remains, and will remain, 
with meanings by no means wholly fathomed, with 
•depths never thoroughly sounded. Like Hamlet, 
Faust will ever reserve more than gleanings to reward 
the labours of future thinkers ; but our present at- 
tempt may be attended by some gladness, and may 
yield some profit ; since not without delight and gain 
can men strive to enjoy and to understand one of the 
world's masterpieces ; not without enduring advantage 
can they seek to love and to admire, through critical 
comprehension, Goethe's immortal tragedy of Faust. 



M 



MADAME ROLAND. 

' C* T moi aussi, j'aurai quelque existence dans la 
generation future,' cries Madame Roland, 
when, in her ' Memoires,' she appeals, with sublime 
confidence, to the justice of posterity, and reposes 
upon the conviction of her fame in the after-time. 
' One who will claim remembrance from several 
centuries — Jeanne Marie Phlipon, the wife of Roland,' 
says Carlyle, who further terms her, 'genuine, the 
creature of Sincerity and Nature in an age of Arti- 
ficiality, Pollution, Cant ; there, in her still com- 
pleteness, in her still invincibility, she, if thou knew 
it, is the noblest of all living Frenchwomen/ Nor 
will her own countrymen willingly let die the repu- 
tation of this heroine and martyr of the Revolution. 
In 1864, the discovery of various lettres inedites gave 
birth to the ' Etude sur Madame Roland, par C. A. 
Dauban ;' to a new edition of her own ' Memoires/ 
edited by Danbau and Faugere. The ' Etude ' con- 
tained the letters of Madame Roland to Buzot ; and 
in 1867, Dauban produced two volumes of 'lettres 
eri partie inedites de Madame Roland/ In the y c ar 



MADAME ROLAND. 267 

1882, M. Imbert de Saint Amand has produced his 
picture of the long agony of French royalty during 
the Revolution (Marie Antoinette et l'Agonie de la 
Royaute), in which Madame Roland figures as the 
antagonist of, or the foil to, Marie Antoinette. 

M. de Saint Amand is, in sentiment, a royalist. 
His object is to win sympathy for the royal family 
by a touching narrative, in which he emphasises their 
sufferings. His heroine is, naturally, Marie Antoin- 
ette. As some historians have conceived the essence 
of the great civil wars of England as a duel between 
Charles and Cromwell for sovereign power, so M. de 
Saint Amand draws Marie Antoinette and Madame 
Roland as 'deux adversaires qui traitent de puissance 
a puissance. Le Chateau des Tuileries et l'Hotel du 
ministere de l'interieur sont comme deux citadelles 
ennemies placees a deux pas Tun de l'autre.' He 
speaks of the 'haine vouee par Madame Roland a 
Marie Antoinette. Cette haine fut inspiree a la 
vainteuse bourgeoise par la plus mauvaise, la plus 
vile de toutes les conseilleres, par l'envie.' He says 
elsewhere, ' Personne ne contribua plus a Pagonie de 
la royaute que Madame Roland.' But, in truth, Saint 
Amand is not a critic; nor can we place much reliance 
upon his pictures or his arguments. He seeks, before 
all things, effect. His somewhat theatrical method 
of essaying to write history, impels him to present 
two distinguished women, one the ' parvenue ' of 
genius, the other the daughter of the Caesars, in the 



268 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

sharpest dramatic contrast, and to draw the one as 
the ruthless antagonist who triumphed, and gloried 
in triumphing, over the other. This is not history ; 
this is not poetry. Saint Amand's is 'that over-hasty 
work which never seems true work.' His study is 
not profound ; his analysis is not penetrating — nor 
are his results convincing. He is not a writer of 
real ability or of genuine conscience. His work may 
interest but cannot satisfy. 

Madame Roland presents herself to us under two 
aspects — as an historical figure and as a psychological 
study. Under both aspects she is supremely inter- 
esting, and exercises upon our minds an undying 
charm. A radiant white figure, set in the red frame 
of the hideous guillotine, her lips are for ever eloquent 
with her last cry, — ' O liberte ! comme en fa jouee ! ' 
The child and the victim of the Revolution which 
once she so dearly loved, from which she hoped so 
much for humanity, she remains its highest heroine. 
' Reader, mark that queen - like burgher woman ; 
beautiful, Amazonian, graceful to the eye; more so 
to the mind/ 

The mass of unedited papers which have been 
discovered since lofty history, in the person of Car- 
lyle, last essayed to paint her for posterity, will 
warrant us in an attempt to try a new portrait of 
the Egeria of the Girondins, of the priestess of the 
Revolution. She formed a part of a great move- 
ment, but yet her soul dwelt apart, and she is well 



MADAME ROLAND. 269 

worth being considered as a solitary star, and dealt 

with in an essay consecrated to her as a most 

individual woman. 

The basis of our knowledge of Madame Roland, 

from childhood upwards, through all mental growth, 

to that sad moment in which 

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 
And slits the thin-spun life — 

is those ' Memoires de Madame Roland/ written by 
herself in prison, during her long captivity of five 
months. She herself says, ; Je me propose d'employer 
les loisirs de ma captivite a retracer ce qui m'est per- 
sonnel depuis ma tendre enfance jusqu'a ce moment.' 
From the moment of her arrest she foresaw her doom. 
Her pure love of liberty had rendered her hateful to 
the tyrants who ruled, and who dreaded a woman so 
ardent and so noble. She records, proudly, ' Je me- 
prise la mort ; je n'ai jamais craint que la crime, et je 
n'assurerais pas mes jours au prix d'une lacheteV 
She refused flight, and she despised suicide. In the 
solitude and the gloom of her prison, it was a refresh- 
ment to her weary spirit to re-live, and to depict, the 
past days of childhood and of youth. As we read her 
6 Memoires,' we are under the ghastly impression that 
her writing might at any moment be interrupted by 
the summons of the headsman. Perpetually on the 
blank walls of the prison cell there glooms, in sun- 
light as in moonlight, the red shadow of the glaive of 
the guillotine ; and these records, addressed to pos- 



2yO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

terity, are touching even beyond their own intrinsic 
pathos, when we realise the fact that they were 
written, by a doomed woman, in the Shadow of 
Death. 

She felt the urgency and the hurry of her task. 
She knew the conditions under which, if achieved at 
all, it had to be completed ; and we can feel how 
rapidly her fleet pen flew over the patient paper. 
' The last infirmity of noble minds,' weighed upon her, 
and impelled her to secure the record of her life as an 
appeal to history, before the impending night came 
in which she could no longer work. Immersed in the 
thoughts and memories upon which writing such as 
hers is based, she forgets for a time the Piombi which 
are closing round her ; and old loves, and old anti- 
pathies, flash through her mind with all the vividness 
of the olden time of freedom and of safety. She tells 
us that she wrote three hundred pages in twenty-two 
days. What pen was ever more pitilessly driven 
under the impulse of a danger which was certain, 
while the time at which it might fall was wholly, was 
most terribly uncertain ? Her papers, as she wrote 
them, were confided to Champagneux and to Bosc, 
two faithful friends who obtained opportunities of 
visiting her in her prison. Champagneux, when him-: 
self arrested, thought it necessary, for his own safety, 
as well as for that of Madame Roland, to destroy a 
portion of her ' Notices Historiques ; ' but something 
was saved. The manuscripts confided to Bosc were 



MADAME ROLAND. 271 

well preserved, and they are those which now we 
read. Both Bosc and Champagneux published, 
after her death, memoirs in vindication of her fame. 
The work of Bosc appeared in 1795 ; that of Cham- 
pagneux in 1800. These two men were the first that 
appealed in her behalf to history, and to the judg- 
ment of the after-time. Bosc's book was ' imprime 
au profit de sa ' (Madame Roland's) i fille unique, privee 
de la fortune de ses pere et mere.' We may hope 
that the unfortunate Eudora derived benefit from a 
publication which reflected honour upon her mur- 
dered mother. The confiscation of the property of 
M. and of Madame Roland does not seem ever to 
have been reversed. Following the course of her own 
narrative, and availing ourselves of the labours of later 
-editors, we may now essay to construct some image 
of the life and death, and of the full space between 
birth and death, of this extraordinary woman, with 
her rare gifts, her noble character, and her tragic end. 
Marie Jeanne Phlipon was born in Paris, 18th 
March 1754. Her father was one Gratien Phlipon, a 
small engraver, who combined with that pursuit occa- 
sional excursions into a speculative trade in jewellery ; 
and her mother was one Marguerite Bimont. This 
couple had seven children, out of which six died in 
infancy, mostly when put out to nurse, and Marie 
Jeanne, who was also c at nurse ' till she was two years 
old, was the only child that survived early childhood. 
She says of her father, ' Ou ne peut pas dire que ce 



2J2 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

fut un homme vertueux ; ' and as our narrative pro- 
gresses, we shall find cause to agree with her estimate 
of M. Phlipon. Of her mother, Madame Roland 
records that she c avec beaucoup de bonte avait de la 
froideur.' The young girl was never in full sympathy 
with her father ; but for her mother she felt a 
strong affection ; and all Madame Roland's feelings 
were always strong and tenacious. Her childhood 
and early youth were, on the whole, happy. Born iri 
a family of the smaller bourgeoisie, in the day of sharp 
distinctions between classes, she saw intimately the 
interior of French burgher life ; and with an almost 
unconscious bitterness, she just felt and touched the 
rim of the insolent, empty, pretentious hangers-on of 
aristocracy. She witnessed the negligent, scornful 
injustice and oppression of the French privileged 
classes of the years during which the coming revolu- 
tion was silently germinating. She speaks of herself 
as combining, when a child, une si grande politesse 
avec quelque dignite ; and in her little domestic 
errands to greengrocers, and the like, she impressed 
the tradespeople with astonishment at her dignified 
courtesy. However she might afterwards dislike aris- 
tocracy as a French institution, the little girl was by 
instinct a born aristocrat, with superiority of character 
softened by grace and refined by noble manners. 

As a child, she could be a little obstinate and self- 
willed, but she was of a generous nature, and was 
easily touched and won by kindness. The young 



MADAME ROLAND. . 273 

girl had a most active and inquiring mind, full of 
distinction and of force, and she was singularly eager 
for self-culture. She seems to have had early a sense 
of superiority to her surroundings, and a tendency to 
retreat alone into her own thoughts and dreams. 
She read much, and had some dislike for domestic 
avocations. She says, ' Mon premier besoin etait de 
plaire et de faire du bien.' She was benevolent and 
charitable ; and she records that the child which read 
with avidity all the serious books that she could get 
hold of, was also the best dancer among her young 
companions. She had originally a fervid religious 
tendency, which, like all her feelings, was strong and 
deep. If her own account of her religious ardour 
read sometimes as if her devotion had been some- 
what sickly and affected, it must be borne in mind 
that such an impression is created by the account 
written in later life by a Pagan (with just an occa- 
sional flicker of conjectural deism) who half scorned 
a feeling which, while it lasted, was undoubtedly 
fervent and sincere. 

When eleven years and two months old, she aston- 
ished her parents by expressing a determined desire 
to retire for a year into a convent, in order to pre- 
pare herself fitly for her first communion. They 
consented, and she entered (7th May 1765) the con- 
vent of Les Dames de la Congregation, Rue Neuve 
Saint Etienne, Fabourg de Saint Marcel, an insti- 
tution situated very near to the prison de Ste Pelagie, 

s 



274 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

in which she wrote her narrative of the event. In 
the convent she was happy, full of religious fervour, 
and very successful in all her examinations. Her 
remarkable ability was fully recognised, and she 
formed two enduring female friendships with Sophie 
and Henriette Cannet. She issued from her year of 
seclusion, and tells us, 'J'avais pourtant le secret 
dessein de me consacrer a la vie religieuse ; ' but, 
being an only child, she could not carry out her 
purpose, and returned to the world — and to her 
books. 

Reading and thought led to doubt, and doubt 
darkened to denial. She could not reconcile with 
her idea of a beneficent Deity the doctrine of the 
eternal punishment of so many weak and ignorant 
creatures ; and she adds, ' Du moment ou tout 
Catholique a fait ce raisonnement, 1'eglise (Romaine) 
peut le regarder comme perdu pour elle.' Her first 
doubt was noble ; and it must be remembered that 
she, like Voltaire, was placed in close juxtaposition 
with ' L'lnfame/ 

She became a philosopher, passing, with her wonted 
ardour, from one set of opinions to the other. Many 
fluctuations of feeling tended more and more strongly 
in the direction of scepticism ; and it is a characteris- 
tic evidence of her change of views that she took to 
church, in place of her mass book, Dacier's Plutarch. 

In proportion as she leaned to denial she turned 
toward Republicanism. Like her contemporaries, 



MADAME ROLAND. 275 

Madame Roland was deeply attracted by Roman 
history and by the civic virtues of many of its 
heroes. Plutarch and Tacitus were her favourite 
writers ; and she indulged in a wide course of mis- 
cellaneous reading. Schaftesbury {sic) and Thomp- 
son {sic) were her best loved English authors ; and, 
becoming ' esprit fort et femme savante,' she read 
with enthusiasm Helvetius and Diderot, Rousseau 
and Voltaire. The ' Candide ' of Voltaire and the 
1 Nou'velle Heloise ' of Rousseau were well known to 
her. She admired Louvet and his ' Faublas/ Of 
this licentious writer she remarks, ' Les gens de 
lettres, et les personnes de gout connaissent ses jolis 
romans, 011 les graces de Pimagination s'allient a la 
l^gerete du style ; au ton de la philosophie, au sel 
de la critique/ Truly a wide range of reading for 
a young French girl of the eighteenth century ! 
Rousseau's 'Confessions' appeared in 1788, and 
seem to have furnished her w r ith a model for her own 
' Memoires.' She writes of herself with singular 
frankness and naivete, and does not shun some sub- 
jects upon which a woman might well be reticent. 

Thus she paints herself in youth, ' A quatorze ans, 
comme aujourdhui, j'avais environ cinq pieds ; ma 
taille avait acquis toute sa croissance ; la jambe bien 
faite, le pied bien pose ; les handles tres relevees ; la 
poitrine large et superbement meublee ; les epaules 
effacees ; Pattitude ferme et gracieuse, la marche 
rapide et legere ; voila pour le premier coup d'ceil.' 



276 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

She speaks of her own ' sourire tendre et seducteur/ 
She adds later, ' Les evenements du manage me 
parurent aussi surprenants que desagreables,' adding 
some further particulars which we will not quote. 
She records, * La volupte — je doute que jamais per- 
sonne fut plus faite pour elle et Ys.it moins goutee.' 
The austerity of Roman manners, as she conceived 
them, was set before her mind as a model of conduct ; 
and both purity and pride assisted her to control to 
virtue a sensual temperament — a merit surely great 
in a woman of her day, who had such a husband — 
and such a lover ! 

Fond of self-analysis, and immersed in reflection, 
high-hearted, ardent, ambitious ; devoted to ideals, 
she felt herself a 'femme d'elite,' and was not with- 
out presentiments of a destiny, stormy indeed, but 
illustrious. Whatever lower inclinations she may have 
had, she could subdue them ; too proud to yield, 
except ideally, to passion, she would not descend 
from the heights of purity to the baseness of sensu- 
ality ; she could not stoop to an illicit ; liaison.' Her 
name, .her reputation, remain stainless and above 
reproach. Many looked up to her and leaned upon 
her. Shame she would not know, and she cared for 
reputation. Her will was firm, and her character 
was strong, sometimes almost hard ; though she 
is linked to our affections by some of the vanities, 
the weaknesses even, of woman. With her, the 
woman was the pedestal upon which to erect the 



MADAME ROLAND. 277 

heroine, and she won the place which she deserved 
in history. A fair woman flushed with feeling, living 
in a most grim time, she triumphed over all that 
was base in herself, or in her times, and her name 
survives as that of a woman pure, generous, and 
lofty. 

In her girlhood, she ardently desired marriage ; 
but her ideal was high, and she would not marry 
trivially or unworthily. Full of sensibility, she 
was sustained by sentimentalism ; but her in- 
stincts were noble, and her impulses ambitious. 
Genius is proud as well as modest, and she had 
the unrest of superiority, the ardour of conviction, 
and self-devotion to some ideal life. A wanton 
she could never be. Not one of her portraits 
pleased her, — ' Parceque j'ai plus d'ame que de 
figure/ She was right in thinking that her greatest 
beauty lay in expression ; and expression is mastered 
only by master-painters. To make a perfect portrait 
of her, two pictures should have been painted — the 
one representing her in repose, the other in excite- 
ment. The woman tells us frankly, — ' Je plais 
generalement.' The flippant Camille Desmoulins 
wondered that ' avec si peu de beaute,' she had so 
many admirers. She is constrained to differ from 
him. ' II faut qu'on me distingue et me cherisse ; 
cela ne manque guere quand en me voit souvent, et 
qu'on a du bon sens et un cceur/ She can estimate 
her own value, and says, scornfully, that Camille 



278 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

could only have seen her once or twice, and that she 
would certainly be cold and stiff towards him. 

Madame Roland narrates, with great complacency, 
that she had, as a young girl, a perfect crowd of 
suitors. Apart from her own attractions, which were 
great, she was an only child, and her father was 
supposed to be well to do as a successful tradesman. 
Her admirers, according to French custom, did not 
declare themselves to the young lady direct, but 
addressed their suits to the father ; and Madame 
Roland describes how she dictated to her parent the 
letters of refusal which she induced him to write. 
Her suitors were, naturally, of her own 'bourgeois' 
order, and not one of the many had for her any 
strong attraction, though a certain La Blancherie 
stirred her fancy without succeeding in touching her 
heart. Among these 'pretendans ' we find a butcher 
and a barrister ; the butcher pecunious, if vulgar, the 
barrister without business and without brains. The 
mother of the young girl was in failing health, and 
saw with dismay this wholesale rejection of all offers 
of marriage. Madame Phlipon argued seriously with 
the haughty daughter who showed herself so in- 
exorable to lovers. ' Do not refuse a husband,' cried 
the mother ; ' my health is failing. Let me see you 
secure in the refuge of marriage ; think of the 
happiness it may bring to you ! ' ' Oui, maman, un 
bonheur comme le votre ! ' replied the daughter. 
Now Madame Phlipon was not a happy wife. Of her 



MADAME ROLAND. 279 

husband, ' ou ne peut pas dire que ce fut un homme 
vertueux.' During his wife's illness he became very 
playful, and sought compensations away from home. 
Under pretext of stepping out for five minutes to the 
* Cafe/ he remained away from home for times of 
lengthening duration. When her mother died, the 
daughter was plunged into the deepest grief ; but the 
widower was reasonable. He pointed out that the 
ways of Providence were generally creditable, and that, 
in the instance before them, peculiar sagacity had been 
shown, since the defunct had fulfilled the purposes of 
her life, and was no longer of any use. His daughter 
dreaded a stepmother ; but M. Phlipon, like George 
II., could, after the loss of a wife, manage to get on 
with mistresses, and the good man speedily selected 
one, and so earned his daughter's gratitude and 
approval. Her mother dead, Jeanne-Marie plunged 
even more deeply than before into the reading of 
many books, and she pursued music, which, indeed, 
she had always loved, with increasing ardour. 

But to Madlle. Phlipon marriage came at last. She 
had not found her ideal in love ; her tentatives of 
passion, of affection, of ambition, had all failed her. 
She would not marry men of her own rank, men 
■ dans le commerce ; ' and at five-and-twenty, in spite 
of feeling ' des sens tres inflammables,' she married, 
4th February 1780, M. Roland de la Platiere, he 
being then forty-six years of age. He had known 
her for five years before he proposed. 



280 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

M. Phlipon not unnaturally regarded M. Roland 
as an unsuitable husband for his bright and brilliant 
daughter, and, at first, treated M. Roland's proposals 
with great scorn. 

But Jeanne-Marie was determined, and had a clear 
will of her own. When M. Phlipon failed in business, 
and fell into poverty, he was supported by the son- 
in-law whom he had regarded with aversion and 
treated with insult. 

The marriage was one of the head and not of the 
heart. The twenty-one years' difference in age was 
not in itself a very great matter ; but the personality 
and the character of the * venerable epoux ' were 
antagonistic to any suggestion of romance, to any 
idea of love. Madame Roland speaks of * sa gravite, 
ses moeurs, ses habitudes, toutes consacrees au travail, 
me le faisaient considerer, pour ainsi dire, sans sexe, 
ou comme un philosophe qui n'existait que par la 
raison.' She knew her own objects, but she was 
under no illusions ; and she felt, with keen insight, 
that, after such a marriage, she might meet with a 
man who could stir her passion and touch her heart. 
She did meet with such a man, who even became 
her lover ; but, under the wise governance of her 
reason, she would discharge duty where she could 
not give love ; and she would use her marriage to 
subserve her ambition and to afford her a position 
in which she could render service to humanity. The 
marriage reminds us somewhat of that entered upon 



MADAME ROLAND. 28 1 

by the nobly erring Dorothea with the loathsome 
Casaubon. Roland had a pedantry equal to his 
probity — which latter was great. He was a solemn 
coxcomb, dictatorial, with all the assumption of a 
barren philosopher. He was cold, stiff, formal, and 
required a secretary, a housekeeper — and a blind, 
deferential worshipper of his talents. He was wealthy 
and w T ell-placed ; Inspector of Manufactories under 
Government ; and had some pretensions to be of 
respectable old family. He was tall, meagre, bony, 
with a very yellow complexion, rather bald, with a 
head 'deja peu garni de cheveux.' He was pompous, 
worrying, exacting, and formal. Surely his wife 
must have seen Othello's visage in his mind ; and 
she may have overrated a mind which was, behind 
its pretensions, profoundly mediocre. It was a 
marriage of reason, of duty, and of ' convenance.' 

M. Roland was opinionated and dogmatic. His 
wife records that ' II tenait si bien a ses opinions, que 
je n'ai acquis qu'apres assez long-temps la confiance 
de le contredire.' What spiritual slavery for so bright 
a spirit ! She respected him ; she served and aided 
him ; she had a conjugal friendship for him ; but of 
love there could be no question. The advantage to 
him of such a wife was simply incalculable. She 
thought for him, worked for him, wrote for him. She 
enabled him to become minister, and she made his 
house the most intellectual and most charming in 
Paris. In his obscure niche in history, he is sustained 



282 STl/DIES in history, legend, etc. 

by the tender hand of a woman, devoted to her duty, 
immortal in her nobleness, sublime in her heroism, 
resplendent in her genius, tragic in her destiny. The 
first few years of marriage were spent in the provinces. 
Madame Roland's daughter Eudora, her only child, 
was born at Amiens. They lived at Lyons, and at 
the Clos de la Platriere. In 1784, Roland solicited, 
but in vain, 'des lettres de noblesse.' She lived for a 
time contentedly in the peace and seclusion of the 
country ; she studied, played, and read ; she was 
exemplary in the discharge of all the duties of a 
mother and a wife; she was kind and charitable to 
all her poorer neighbours ; but at length she began 
to feel, restlessly, that she was rusting in obscurity. 
Perhaps, too, the virtuous Roland, lived with in so 
narrow a circle, may have become unendurable. She 
followed with interest public events, and began to 
worship a seeming goddess that was to turn out an 
adulteress that would hunt for the precious life. For a 
time she truly loved the country, but when public events 
aroused her, when ambition began to stir within her, 
she speaks contemptuously of ' la vie cochonne de la 
campagne,' and she yearns for Paris. A woman with 
an empty heart, she longed to plunge into politics. 
She had confidence in her own genius ;* she ardently 
desired the welfare of her country, and with a vast, 
vague yearning, she adored liberty. 

' La revolution survint, et nous enflamma ; amis de 
Thumanite, adorateurs de la liberte, nous crumes qu'elle 



MADAME ROLAND. 283 

venait regenerer l'espece nous l'accueillimes 

avec transport/ ' Le severe Roland ' sympathised with 
her tendencies, if he could not fully share her aspira- 
tions. They burned their ships behind them, and went 
to Paris — to that Paris which she should only quit upon 
its revolutionary scaffold. Farewell the quiet life of 
•country calm, of peaceful study, of homely joys ! 
Henceforth, until its end, the life of Madame Roland 
lias merged into the Revolution. i Les moments de 
crise produisent un redoublement de vie chez les 
hommes,' says Chateaubriand. Meanwhile, in the 
winter of 1787-88, M. Phlipon had died, supported 
•during his last years by his daughter and his son-in- 
law ; and, in 1784, the Rolands had visited England. 
What Madame Roland says of us is so flattering, that 
it is worth transcribing : — l Allez, croyez que tout in- 
dividu qui ne sentira point d'estime pours les Anglais, 
■et un tendre interet mele d'admiration pour leurs 
femmes, est un lache, ou un etourdi, ou un sot ignor- 
ant qui parle sans savoir.' 

They arrived in Paris 20th February 1791. 

On 2d April Mirabeau died. The flight of the royal 
family to Varennes occurred on 20th June. The Con- 
vention of Pilnitz met on August 25-27 ; and Leopold 
II., Fredrick Wilhelm II., with certain minor potentates, 
and the emigrant Princes of the Blood, think that the 
position of Louis XVI. calls upon other Governments 
for interference. The Constitution is finished, and 
accepted by the King, 14th September. Legislative 



284 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Assembly meets October 1. Massacres in the Ice 
Tower occurred in October. The country, distracted 
by anxieties about foreign attack, and by doubts 
whether France were in a position to meet it. The 
whole nation agitated, suspicious, turbulent. Mean- 
while the Revolution is growing. Such was the Paris 
into which the Rolands entered. 

It was a time that might well develop patriotism 
into passion ; and ardent spirits, indignant at the 
long rule of imposture, might well hope all things 
for the State and for humanity, might well yearn for 
liberty, and might, innocently, further that revolution 
which, * sous pretexte de liberte, engendre la tyrannie.' 
The politics of Madame Roland were, in the main,, 
the politics of noble ideas ; but it is difficult to 
separate, in action, the politics of ideas from the 
struggles of faction, and from the lust of power ; and 
a woman, immersed in the struggle, may become 
bitter, vindictive, even cruel. Madame Roland was 
filled with a hatred of the Court and of Marie Antoin- 
ette. Her detractors, as M. de St Amand, allege 
that her motive was the mere envy of ' la parvenue 
qui ne sera jamais une grande dame/ This is not 
just ; but it is a curious speculation to think what 
Madame Roland might have been had she been born 
an aristocrat, had she taken part in the Trianon fetes,, 
had she felt the glamour and the grace of the fair 
young Queen in her day of splendour and of charm. 
Assuredly such altered circumstances would have 



MADAME ROLAND. 285 

produced different feelings — perhaps even a loyal 
and devoted attachment to the fair woman on a 
throne. As it was, Madame Roland desired, I fear, 
1 deux tetes illustres.' Lamartine (Cours de Littera- 
ture) says, ' Elle anime les Girondins, ses familiers, 
d'une haine implacable contre la Reine, deja si 
humiliee et si menacee ; elle n'a ni respect, ni pitie 
pour cette victime . . . . elle enflait un mari vulgaire 
du souffle de sa colere de femme contre une cour 
odieuse, parce qu'elle ne s'ouvrait pas a sa vanite de 
parvenue.' Lamartine is fond of rhetorical exaggera- 
tion, and the above passage is exaggerated ; but 
Madame Roland was in power when Marie Antoinette 
was in the Temple, and the woman of genius certainly 
felt no pity for the sufferings of the woman born in 
the purple. No theoretical objection to royalty in the 
abstract can excuse ungenerous or unwomanly feeling 
or action toward Marie Antoinette as a woman, as a 
mother, and a wife. Most queenlike when discrowned, 
the long agony of Marie Antoinette, the hapless daugh- 
ter of the Caesars, showed her, in deep sorrow and sore 
humiliation, in the very royalty of womanhood. The 
only excuse for Madame Roland is the bitterness of feel- 
ing engendered by a time of fever, hatred, and revenge. 
And oh, the whirligig of mocking time ! The 
Queen and Madame Roland occupied the next cells 
in the Conciergerie, and Marie Antoinette and Jeanne- 
Marie were executed with an interval of only twenty- 
three days between their deaths ! 



286 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC 

When first she arrived in Paris, Madame Roland 
followed the incidents of the revolution 'avec un 
interet difficile a imaginer. Je courus aux sceances/ 
She little foresaw how very soon her enthusiasm 
would change to disgust, to horror, to indignation. 
Strict, elderly Roland, methodic, rigid, respectable — 
* un Quaker endimanche,' was twice minister, and his 
position offered a career to a wife so immeasurably 
his superior. Roland owed his position as minister 
to Brissot, who wanted a laborious and exact coad- 
jutor in office. A fair administrator, Roland would 
have been, in ordinary times, a decent, honest, head- 
clerk ; but in the Revolution he was swamped and 
lost. When first (24th March 1792) the virtuous 
man received the portfolio of the Interior, he pre- 
sented himself at Court in republican insolence — in 
shoe-strings instead of buckles. The outraged usher 
called Dumouriez's attention to the scandal, and 
the mocking hero of Jemmappes replied, ' Tout est 
perdu ! ' 

She had opportunity of studying, though through 
jaundiced eyes, the King and Queen, and her fine 
feminine pen — always fine, even when her preju- 
dice misled her judgment — records of them in her 
' Memoires ' : — ' Louis XVI., toujours flottant entre la 
crainte d'irriter ses sujets, la volonte de les contented 
et dans l'incapacite de les gouverner .... Toujours 
proclamant, d'une part, le maintien de ce qu'il faisait 
saper de Tautre, sa marche oblique et sa conduite 



MADAME ROLAND. 287 

fausse exciterent d'abord la defiance, et finirent par 
allumer rindignation.' 

Her penetrating woman's insight detects the weak- 
ness of the well-meaning fatuous King. Had he been 
a soldier, had Mirabeau lived, had Louis not dis- 
missed Dumouriez — might not the fate of the 
monarchy have been different ? We record with less 
pleasure her description of the ill-fated Queen. She 
says the King was ' entraine par une etourdie, 
joignant a l'insolence autrichienne la presomption 
de la jeunesse, l'ivresse des sens, l'insouciance de la 
legerete, seduite elle-meme par tous les vices d'une 
cour asiatique, auxquels l'avait trop bien preparee 
l'example de sa mere.' 

The Hotel of the Minister of the Interior had been 
rendered splendid by the taste of Calonne, and in 
this palace Madame Roland reigned. The daughter 
of Phlipon, the bankrupt engraver, may well have 
felt some exultation as she moved, a queen, among 
those handsome rooms ; and yet dearer to her than 
any magnificence was the power for good which, as 
she thought, her position gave her. 

The party of c la Gironde ' then comprised the 
noblest politicians of the Revolution ; men of talent, 
of character, ardent for liberty, impassioned for 
humanity ; they were orators, were patriots, and were 
a power. To this party Madame Roland and her 
husband naturally attached themselves ; and she 
became the soul and inspiration of the party, the life 



288 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

and impulse -of their deeds and words. Yet never 
did she exceed the fine limits of feminine reserve and 
womanly modesty. She never seemed to rule ; her 
influence was felt, but she assumed no pride of place 
or power. 

She always sought to efface herself in favour of ' le 
severe Roland/ His celebrated 'Letter to the King ' 
was her work. She records of her complacent hus- 
band, ' II finissait souvent par se persuader que veri- 
tablement il avait ete dans une bonne veine l'ors- 
qu'il avait ecrit tel passage qui sortait de ma plume/ 
This little passage, touched with a subtle satire, is 
curiously characteristic of the pedantic minister and 
of his able wife. She was always ready to spare his 
4 amour propre' by retreating behind him when she had 
done his work ; but she left — until she wrote her 
'Memoires' — all the credit to the minister; and he was 
ready to receive all the praise. 

Around them — around her, their Egeria — gathered 
the young and noble, the pure and ardent of the 
great Gironde : party. She was surrounded by a 
group of distinguished men — and admirers ; as Buzot, 
Barbaroux, Brissot, Lanthenas, Louvet, Gorsas, de 
Bancal, Bosc, and many others. Dumouriez said of 
them : ' They are exiled Romans. The republic, as 
they understand it, is but the romance of a woman of 
mind. They are about to intoxicate themselves with 
fine speeches, while the people will get drunk with 
blood.' Ah, that getting drunk with blood ! Is the 



MADAME ROLAND. 289 

Revolution coming to that? 'In revolutions/ said 
Danton, ' victory remains with the most wicked.' 
Will the Girondins be wicked enough to secure 
victory? They dreamt— under her inspiration — of a 
moderate, firm, incorruptible, ideal Republic ; noble, 
clement, beneficent. 

Plutarch was their model — Perfectibility was their illu- 
sion — Ruin was their reward. While Madame Roland 
was minister, she had, beside ' soirees intimes/ twice a 
week, in her ' hotel/ dinner parties, at which covers were 
usually laid for fifteen guests. The hour of dinner 
was five ; and one singularity of these banquets con- 
sisted in the fact that, beside Madame Roland herself, 
no woman was ever present at them. She did not 
care for ' society/ visited little, and preferred men to 
her own sex. 

Among the constant 'habitues' of Roland's 'hotel' 
we find Brissot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Buzot ; but all 
patriotic talent is sure of a welcome from Madame 
Roland, were it only to test and try men who seem 
likely to play an important part in that Revolution 
which tends ever to become more and more mad. 
Hence Robespierre and Danton are to be discerned 
among the guests of the fair hostess. Robespierre 
comes chiefly in consequence of his own request to 
be invited. He was at first unimportant, and was 
always repulsive ; but Madame Roland generously 
patronised an obscure but determined deputy, and 
does not then foresee what warrant that mean-souled 

T 



29O STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

atrabiliar Robespierre will one day sign. Madame 
Roland thought him honest: — * Je lui pardonnais en 
faveur des principes son mauvais langage et son 
ennuyeux debit' With her, in this case, careless 
generosity overrides native insight. Of Danton's face 
she says, — 'Je n'ai jamais rien vu qui caracterisat si 
parfaitement l'emportement des passions brutales, et 
l'audace la plus etonnante, demi-voilee par l'air d'une 
grande jovialite, l'affectation de la franchise, et d'une 
sorte de bonhomie.' Her fine woman's pen recog- 
nises the audacity, the brutality, the power of this 
debauched, corrupt, bloodthirsty Titan of the Revolu- 
tion ; but Madame Roland thus paints Danton after 
they had become bitter — even deadly — enemies. But 
victory remains with the most wicked. Are there 
not Marat and Robespierre ? The Dantonists shall 
succeed the Girondins in the same cells of the Con- 
ciergerie. Danton fluctuated for some time between the 
Montagne and the Gironde. Perhaps he was repelled 
from the Gironde by the subtle scorn shown for him 
by Madame Roland. 6 They do not trust me,' he said. 
He held aloof from the party, and threw his thunder- 
voice, his prodigious power, and his ruthless reckless- 
ness into the scale of La Montagne. 

A fair woman flushed with feeling in the wild 
excitement of a raging time, Madame Roland towers 
aloft above that roaring sea of a mad democracy, and 
seems to guide the whirlwind and direct the storm. 
But she, like so many mortals, works blindly, and 



MADAME ROLAND. 2g\ 

contributes unwittingly to the despotism of Marat 
and of Robespierre, to the massacres of September, 
to the horrors of the Terror, and to the doom of her 
party and herself. 

Distinctive among her many fine qualities is a 
bright, high clearness of mind, of heart, of soul ; and 
this is coupled with a calm courage which rises 
above ordinary heroism. She was effluent of light ; 
she radiated conviction and enthusiasm. Tender she 
was — but sentimental, never. This high-hearted 
Pagan woman is always noble. Full herself of 
ardour for the cause which she held to be holy, 
she could inspire others with her own lofty pur- 
pose. She was able to sorrow, to suffer, to endure 
unto the death ; and she could say, with Brutus, — 

Set honour in one eye and death i J the other, 
And I will look on both indifferently. 

She did prefer honour to life ; and her high ideals 
uplifted her above all dread of death. When she 
thought that the example of her undeserved death 
might benefit the country that she loved so well, she 
deliberately accepted, with loftiest courage, the red 
death of the horrible scaffold of the Revolution. 
'The greatest human effort is to wait;' and she 
could wait through five months of woeful captivity, 
through the long, long nights in a dreary dungeon, 
for the bitter end of a noble life of thirty-eight long 
but intense years. 

1 Love feareth death, 5 sings Mrs Browning ; and 



292 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Madame Roland, like Marie Antoinette, had ties of 
love that added to the bitterness of death ; but she 
had a proud, defiant fortitude ; and yet the willing 
victim seldom quailed or faltered. Impassioned, 
ardent, vivacious ; with the eloquence of enthusiasm 
and the influence of example ; touching in her sweet- 
ness, flaming with her force, she imparted impulse and 
supplied ideas to the noblest party of the Revolu- 
tion. Her beauty, flushing with excitement, lighting 
up with elevated sentiment and sanguine hope for 
humanity, rendered her the goddess and the martyr 
of a noble cause and of a glorious dream. 

But a sad shadow fell upon her high and ardent 
hopes. The sceptre began to fall from the hand of 
her once puissant party, and was seized by Danton, 
Robespierre, Marat. 

■ Eloquence, Philosophism, Respectability avail not. 
Silent, like a queen with the asp on her bosom, sits 
the wife of Roland. They (the Girondins) wanted a 
Republic of the Virtues, wherein they themselves 
should be head ; they got only a Republic of the 
Strengths, wherein others than they were heads.' 
Victory was to remain with men more wicked than 
they. 

It is sad to read in Madame Roland's retrospect of 
that time the melancholy with which her noble soul 
recognises how vain her labours had been — how 
futile had become her lofty hopes. Her disenchant- 
ment was deep as her ardour had been high. It is 



MADAME ROLAND. 293 

worth while to extract a few characteristic passages 
from her ' Memoires.' 

* Vous connaissez mon enthousiasme pour la re- 
volution ; eh bien ! j'en ai honte, elle est devenue 

hideuse.' 

• •••••••• 

1 Vouloir conduire a la liberte un peuple sans 
moeurs, qui blaspheme Dieu, et adore Marat, c'est la 
plus absurde folie.' 

' Le peuple n'est plus fait pour rien sentir que la 
joie cannibale de voir couler du sang, qu'il ne court 
pas de risque de repandre.' 

'Notre gouvernement est une espece de monstre, 
dont les formes et Taction sont egalement revoltantes ; 
il detruit tout ce qu'il touche, et se devore lui-meme : 
ce dernier exces fut l'unique consolation de ses nom- 
breuses victimes.' 

1 L'histoire peindra-t-elle jamais l'horreur de ces 
temps affreux, et les hommes abominables qui les 
remplissent de leurs forfaits ? lis outrepassent les 
cruantes de Marius, les sanguinaires expeditions de 
Sylla.' 

' Mais a quoi peut-on comparer la domination de 
ces hypocrites qui, toujours revetus du masque de la 
justice, toujours parlant le langage de la loi, ont cree 
un tribunal pour servir leur vengeance, et envoient a 



294 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

l'echafaud, avec des formes juridiquement insultantes, 
tous les hommes dont la vertu les offense ' (the Gir- 
ondins) i dont les talents leur font ombrage, ou dont les 
richesses excitent leur convoitise ? Quelle Babylone 
presenta jamais le spectacle de ce Paris, souille de 
sang, et de debauches, gouverne par des magistrats 
qui font profession de debiter le mensonge, de vendre 
la calomnie, de preconiser l'assassinat ? Quel peuple 
a jamais corrompu sa morale, et sou instinct, au point 
de contracter le besoin de voir les supplices, de fremir 
de rage quand ils sont retardes, et d'etre toujours pret 
a exercer sa ferocite sur quiconque entreprend de 
de l'adoucir ou de la calmer? ' 

• ••••••••• 

' Ce qu'on appelle, dans la Convention, la Montagne, 
ne presente que des brigands, vetus et jurant comme 
les gens du port, prechant le meurtre, et donnant 
l'exemple du pillage. 1 

In these utterances, we have not only opinion but 
evidence. Madame Roland knew thoroughly that 
Revolution which she had helped to further, until its 
excesses and its crimes left her far behind it. 

Her view of the Revolution cannot have been un- 
fairly warped by the fact that it had imprisoned her ; 
because an imprisonment so unjust was in itself an 
act of accusation against the Revolution. She was, 
of course, a contemporary ; she knew all the men in 
power, and she was well acquainted with every step 



MADAME ROLAND. 295 

taken in the furious and bloody march of events. 
She writes, in prison : — ' La femme de Roland, 
rappelce de temps en temps, par les soins du Pere 
Duchesne, a la fureur de la populace, en attend 
les derniers exces dans la meme prison d'ou une 
fille entretenue sort tranquille apres avoir paye sa 
surete, et l'impunite de son complice, fabricateur de 
faux assignats.' 

She said, and she in her own person proved the 
truth of the saying, that \ Les individus qu'on envoie 
au tribunal revolutionnaire, ne sont pas des accuses 
qu'on lui donne a juger ; ce sont les victimes qu'il est 
charge de faire punir.' 

She speaks the ' dernier mot ' of history when, de- 
scribing the rule of the Revolution during the Terror, 
she exclaims that it was ' Un gouvernement cent fois 
plus atroce que le despotisme meme sur les ruines 
duquel il s'est eleveV 

To such results do such Revolutions lead. The fire 
which burned up Imposture was palled in the dunnest 
smoke of hell. The noblest and best, those who 
passionately and purely desired liberty, became the 
victims of the Revolution when that commenced to 
devour its own children. Victory remained longest 
with the basest and the wickedest ; until outraged 
humanity, after destroying Robespierre, submitted to 
military despotism as something better than godless 
and lawless revolutionary ferocity and outrage. 

Alike by temperament and character, by position 



296 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

and opportunity, Madame Roland, the heroine of the 
Revolution, was well fitted to understand and to 
characterise the monster that she, to her sorrow, had 
helped to create. It was her intention, had she lived, 
to have written a history of the French Revolution. 

Meanwhile the Revolution marched and trod in 
blood. The 10th August (1792), was the day of the 
fall of the monarchy and the massacre of the Swiss. 
The loss of these brave lives was due to the hesitation 
and the incapacity of the weak King. Napoleon, surely 
a good judge, said afterwards that a little conduct 
and courage would have given victory to the Royal- 
ists. Pity only to see the noble Queen dragged down 
through insult to death by so contemptible a husband 
and a King! 

The breach between the Girondins and the Jacobins 
had widened. The ■' Legal' Republicans were op- 
posed by the Unlimited Sansculottes. At the trial 
of the King (December 11-16) the Gironde made a 
last bid for power, for the popularity which was 
passing to the Mountain. They refused to be out : 
bidden, outstripped in the competition for the favour 
of the populace, and, against their convictions, they 
voted for the death of Louis. That which the 
Jacobins desired, the Girondins accomplished, and it 
was their votes which turned the scale. In an 
Assembly of 721 voters, death, without appeal, was 
carried by 7 votes — that is, was carried by La 
Gironde — the * Pilates of the Monarchy;' but their 



MADAME ROLAND. 297 

immoral action did not uphold their power, or even 
save their lives. Danton, in his fierce scorn, cried, 
• These are your orators ! Sublime language and 
base conduct. What is to be done with such men ? 
Don't talk of them to me. The party is destroyed ! ' 
and destroyed it was. The action of the Gironde 
exposed its weakness as a party ; and its enemies 
were only the more bent upon its destruction. 

On September 2, and onwards towards Septem- 
ber 6 (1792), occurred the horrible massacres in the 
prisons. Marat suggested the idea ; Danton furnished 
the butchers ; Manuel supplied the victims. In the 
prisons of L'Abbaye, Les Carmes, Saint Firmin, La 
Force, Le Grand et le Petit Chatelet, La Concier- 
gerie, Bicetre, and La Salpetriere, the slaughter was 
continued during five days and five nights. The 
number of the paid butchers was 235 ; the number 
of victims no man now can reckon, but the lowest 
estimate would rate them at about 2000. The 
atrocities of these massacres are too fearful to be 
again recited. Edgar Quinet (' La Revolution') says, — 
1 Ce n'etait pas une barbarie imprevue, aveugle, c'etait 
une barbarie lentement meditee, curieusement etudiee, 
par un esprit de sang.' Madame Roland, with her 
noble indignation, records of these September but- 
cheries : — ' Je n'esperai plus que la liberte s'etablit 
parmi des laches, insensibles aux derniers outrages 
qu'on puisse faire a la nature.' The Assembly was 
inactive ; La Gironde was silent. There was no 



298 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

interruption to a massacre of five days and five 
nights ; there was no action taken, no protest raised. 

During this frightful ' boucherie de chair humaine, 
chaque maison est inspected par les agents de la 
Commune. Un coup de marteau a la porte fait 
trembler. La denonciation d'un ennemi, d'une 
domestique, d'un voisin, sufifit pour vous perdre. On 
ne respire plus ! ' 

Strange ! Is not this freed people under a reign of 
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ? And yet it dares not 
breathe for terror ! Perhaps in the bad days of the 
old ' regime/ of aristocratic and royal oppression, there 
was no such terrible time ? Noyadings by night, 
marriages of the Loire, massacres, executions, may, 
possibly, compose a tyranny more horrible than any 
that existed of old. Still, we have, at least, got a 
Revolution. 

The blood of September rolls forever between La 
Gironde and La Montagne. That red flood cannot 
be bridged over ; La Gironde will not pardon those 
massacres, and La Montagne will not pardon La 
Gironde for not pardoning. Hence the destruction of 
the latter party is resolved upon. Danton's loud 
scorn, Robespierre's stealthy hate, will extirpate the 
too virtuous Republicans. Marat perished (July 13th) 
by the hand of the ' angel of assassination,' Charlotte 
Corday. 

Jacobin vengeance rose to the murder pitch. A 
swift decree is issued against La Gironde. Many 



MADAME ROLAND. 299 

deputies, as Guadet, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, 
Petion, escaped, and wandered, ruined and in dread 
of death, hunted and disguised, over France. Verg- 
niaud, Brissot, and the remainder of the ' Twenty-Two,' 
are incarcerated for their death. Roland flies, and 
hides near Rouen. 

Madame Roland, accused of no crime, of no offence, 
was suddenly arrested (31st May 1793) and was incar- 
cerated in L'Abbaye; in which prison she occupied the 
cell which was also tenanted for so brief a time by Char- 
lotte Corday. What a change ! From the sumptu- 
ous hotel of the minister to the little, bare, white- 
washed cell of L'Abbaye ; from troops of friends, to 
a grim jailor ; from communing with and inspiring the 
beautiful, the brave, the noble, to solitary hours in 
the coarse, clanging prison ! And she knew well 
what such imprisonment meant. She knew that the 
gaol was but the ante-chamber to the scaffold. Alone 
and helpless, she could realise what the end would 
be. She knew, too, the men in power ; men ready to 
buy popularity at any price of blood ; and she felt 
that Danton and Robespierre would not hesitate to 
sacrifice their former friend and patroness. She 
understood fully that mixture of tiger and of monkey 
which, according to Voltaire, is the basis of French 
character. 

Ah, the first hours of incarceration must have been 
bitter even to brave Madame Roland ! Her child 
was separated from her. Her husband and Buzot 



303 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

were flying for their lives. Her friends, her party, 
were to be exterminated, and her hopes and dreams 
in politics were all dispelled. Her vehement nature, 
quick to feel deeply, was never ignoble. Hers was 
not the mere mortification of a baffled partisan ; but 
she felt shamed as a patriot, outraged as an idealist. 
She had hoped so much for and from France! We 
can fancy the depression of her first night in L'Abbaye. 
The dread of death would be to her the least of the 
sorrows that weighed upon her, and pressed her spirit 
down, amid the loneliness of that grim and cheerless 
dungeon. 

And her friends, the arrested Girondins, were, as 
she soon knew, in the Conciergerie — the same prison 
which contained Marie Antoinette. Sorrow did not 
destroy the energy of Madame Roland. She could 
only see the heavens through thickly-barred windows ; 
her room was mean and dirty ; the accommodation 
miserable; but the 'concierge' was not inhuman, 
and she soon made her cell available for study and 
for decency : — ' Sublimes illusions, sacrifices generoux, 
espoir, bonheur, patrie — adieu ! ' She felt the indig- 
nation of innocence, the courage of pride, the devo- 
tion of heroism ; but she was also woman, and she 
was oppressed by the parting with her child, and by 
her fears for her country and her friends. They lent 
her an 'oreiller' — it must have been wet with her 
tears ! 

She wrote a protest to the ' Convention Nationale/ 



MADAME ROLAND. 301 

but it remained unanswered. It was addressed to 
enemies who sought her life. Under the tyranny of 
Danton and of Robespierre no friend dared to plead 
for her or for any liberty. 

After having been for twenty-four days immured -in 
L'Abbaye, she was suddenly set at liberty. No cause 
had been assigned for her arrest ; none was given 
for her discharge. Full of the joy of freedom, of 
the sense of recovered security, she flew to her old 
home ; but when she had ascended four steps of the 
staircase she was, by a refinement of cruelty, re- 
arrested, and conducted to the prison of Sainte 
Pelagie. Even her lofty courage almost failed before 
this shock. Sainte Pelagie was a prison of a lower 
sort than L'Abbaye. No provision was made for the 
support of prisoners, and she had to pay for every- 
thing — for food as for all other necessaries of life. 

Madame Bouchaud, the wife of the gaoler, was 
touched by the noble resignation and sweet manners 
of the new captive ; and while she could do so, she 
softened, so far as possible, the prison life of Madame 
Roland. 

1 J'ai besoin de me posseder parceque j'ai Thabitude 
de me regir;' and she soon ruled to submission the 
despair with which her second imprisonment at first 
overwhelmed her. She resumed her studies and 
commenced her t Memoires.' With an admirable calm 
courage, and a lofty disdain, she conquered the terrors 
of her lot ; though she heard the populace shouting 



302 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

under her window, 'A la guillotine!' and listened to 
the hawkers crying, ' La grande visite du Pere 
Duchesne a la citoyenne Roland dans la prison pour 
lui tirer les vers du nez ; ' and she could hear also the 
terms, ' Reine Coco/ and ' Veille Guenon,' applied to 
her by the foul Hebert and his hoarse mob. 

A proud woman, terribly in earnest, she underwent 
sufferings that outrage and insult womanhood. By 
heavens ! 'tis pitiful to think of this splendid creature 
in Sainte Pelagie ! 

She entered Sainte Pelagie the 24th June; she 
remained there until 31st October 1793. At that 
date she was removed to La Conciergerie — a prison 
which was but the ante-chamber of the scaffold. 
Think of the long, long hours, of the crawling weeks, 
that this bright and active spirit spent in close con- 
finement in Sainte Pelagie ! She was the friend of 
all her fellow-prisoners ; she was the soul of the 
prison. Sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, her 
heroism was not insensibility; for she would often, 
says Riouffe, sit for two or three hours leaning 
against the window and weeping bitterly. She had 
so many thoughts, such memories, so many and such 
deep feelings — and then what baffled hopes and 
vanished dreams of liberty ! 

One day, in some wayward mood, half of bitter- 
ness, half of sorrow, she wrote a letter to Robespierre 
with whom, as she well knew, her fate rested. The 
tone of her letter was proud. She would not ask 



MADAME ROLAND. 303 

for life ; but yet, reading between the lines, we can 
detect a suppressed cry for mercy. Like Anne 
Boleyn, in her celebrated letter to Henry VIII., 
Madame Roland could not suppress feminine sarcasm, 
and a desire to irritate and to abase. This letter 
never met the bilious, bloodshot eyes of Robespierre. 
Could even he have refused to listen to such a covert 
appeal from such a woman — a woman who, in the 
day of her pride and power, had been so friendly to 
him when he was in such need of help ? We can- 
not know. In a flush of haughty feeling, Madame 
Roland tore up her letter ; but the pieces were 
preserved and put together ; and this unsent letter, 
which might have changed so much, was never sent 
to Robespierre. He it was who signed the list for 
Fouquier Tuirville which contained the name of 
Madame Roland, and so sent her to certain death. 

The cadaverous ambition, and the coward's hatred of 
Robespierre, could not leave in life a woman that he 
so dreaded and disliked. Her nobleness, her love of 
liberty, were qualities fatal to her when Robespierre 
had to decide upon her death or life. While in Sainte 
Pelagie, she heard of the execution of Marie Antoin- 
ette (Wednesday, October 16), but from Madame 
Roland, in her prison, this event elicited no word ; 
and she heard also of the execution (October 31) 
of the Girondins, who sang the ' Marseillaise,' first 
in chorus, and then with one voice only, as the head 
of Vergniaud fell last. She learned the flight and 



304 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

sufferings of her proscribed friends ; and she knew 
that her own end could not be far off. She began 
to be aweary of the sun. The readiness is all ; and 
she was glad to die. When the Girondins perished, 
she despaired of her country. She thought that the 
example of her death might serve humanity. Sor- 
rows, sufferings, death she could despise. She looked 
beyond them, to an immortality — of fame. ' He who 
fears not death starts at no shadows ; ' and she, a 
Pagan, rose to the full height of Christian courage 
under martyrdom. ' Les tyrans pevrent m'opprimer, 
mais 'm'avilir ? jamais, jamais ! . . . . Je puis 
tout defier ; va, je vivrai jusqu'a ma derniere heure 
sans perdre un seul instant dans le trouble d'indignes 
agitations.' 

And that last hour was at hand. Her tenderness 
bore its due proportion to the strength of her char- 
acter ; but it never sank to weakness. Her last 
anguish was the thought of ' Mon enfant, mon ami, 
mon epoux ;' but not even such a feeling could for 
an instant lessen or lower her full possession of the 
grandeur of her heroic soul. She is almost too great 
and strong to fully stir our compassion. We admire 
as much as we pity. She uplifts us to her own 
elevation ; she is so strong, and clear, and calm, that 
we regard with wonder the spectacle of her splendid 
courage. 

But the last scene is at hand. 

She is in the ' Conciergerie,' and her doom is fixed. 



MADAME ROLAND. 305 

She occupied in that fatal prison, for eight days, the 
next cell to that in which Marie Antoinette had been 
incarcerated. 

* L'accusation portee contre moi repose entierement 
sur ma pretendue complicite avec des hommes appeles 
conspirateurs.' She knows that the men are not con- 
spirators, but she has no hope of escaping her fate. 
The murder-bar of the revolutionary tribunal, where 
Fouquier Thinville dooms under the dictation of Ro- 
bespierre, is no place that cares for innocence or guilt. 

It is with a singular fascination of horror and of 
charm that we picture to our thought the few last 
days spent by this noble victim in her last prison. 

In the terrible ' Conciergerie,' her cell was the 
asylum of peace and fortitude. When she descended 
into the great Gothic hall, in which all the prisoners 
met, her presence alone restored order and ensured 
calm. Everyone feared to displease her. Madame du 
Barry, imprisoned there at the same time, was treated 
with contempt. To the poor, Madame Roland gave 
money ; to all she gave comfort, counsel, consola- 
tion, courage. She was worshipped in her last few 
days of life. 

On the day of her first appearance before the 
tribunal (which sat above the common hall) — ' Elle 
etoit vetue avec une sorte de recherche. Elle avait 
une anglaise de mousseline blanche, garnie de 
blonde, et rattachee avec une ceinture de velours 
noir. Sa coiffure etoit soignee ; elle portoit un 

U 



305 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

bonnet-chapeau d'une elegante simplicite, et ses beaux 
cheveux flottoient sur ses epaules. Sa figure me 
parut plus animee qu'a Tordinaire. Ses couleurs 
etoient ravissantes ; elle avoit le sourire sur les levres/ 
A crowd of women pressed round her to kiss her robe* 
Everyone was in tears. But as Madame Roland dis- 
appeared, apparently unmoved, through the grating, 
she said only, — ' Du courage ! ' 

Comte Beugnot records, — ' Je l'avois bien admiree 
dans les autres moments de sa vie, mais je ne 
l'appreciai comme il faut que sous les verrous. 
Quelle dignite elle avoit portee dans sa prison ! elle 
y etoit comme sur un trone.' 

Madame Roland had chosen M. Chaurvau-Legarde 
as her counsel ; but she was convinced of the in- 
utility of any advocate assistance, and she knew well 
that the man who should speak for her would incur 
serious danger for himself. Therefore when he saw 
her to consult with her about her defence, she abso- 
lutely refused his help, and said that, if he appeared 
at the * trial ' as her advocate, she would disavow him 
before the judges. ' Demain,' she said ' je n'existerai 
plus ! Je sais le sort qui m'attend.' She drew from 
her finger a ring, and presented it to her courageous 
advocate. 

She appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal 
with serenity, composure, and perfect self-command. 
The chief judge was Claude-Emmanuel d'Obsent. 
Antoine Quintin Fouquier Thinville acted as 'ac- 






MADAME ROLAND. 307 

cusateur public du tribunal criminel extraordinaire et 
revolutionnaire. , The result was a foregone con- 
clusion. 

The prosecutor asked eagerly where her husband, 
M. Roland, was. The brave and loyal wife replied, 
— 'Qu'elle le sache ou non, elle ne doit ni le veut 
le dire.' 

Her courage and composure remained unshaken, 
though at some of Fouquier Thinville's brutal ques- 
tions the insulted woman wept. The evidence was 
mere mockery, but she scorned to address the Court. 
The sentence, dated 'le 18 du mois de Brumaire Tan 
11 de la republique Franchise/ was — death within 
twenty-four hours. 

This was 7th November 1793. 

Marie Antoinette had been executed on 16th Octo- 
ber — twenty-three days before Madame Roland. As 
Madame Roland descended into the great court of 
the prison, in which the prisoners were eagerly wait- 
ing for her, she drew her right hand across her throat, 
to intimate that she had been condemned to death. 
That action was the accepted sign in the Conciergerie. 
She appeared radiant, elated, triumphant. Never had 
prisoner, sentenced unjustly to a bloody death, ex- 
hibited such lofty exultation. She wrote in that 
last night on earth her ' dernieres pensees,' which, 
in addition to the passionate address, meant to be 
understood of one alone, * a toi que je n'ose nommer ! ' 
contain a most touching apostrophe to that young 



308 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

daughter to whom she wrote, — c Souviens toi de ta 
mere ! Mon exemple te restera, et je sens que c'est 
un riche heritage.' 

On 8th November 1793, at 4.30 P.M., on a dark 
November day, Madame Roland left the Conciergerie 
for the scaffold. In the same tumbril with her sat 
Simon-Frangois la Marche, or Lamarque, who had 
been denounced and condemned for alleged plots 
tending to provoke civil war. Lamarche was thirty- 
five, therefore four years younger than Madame 
Roland. Both victims sat, with arms tightly bound, 
in the ' charrette,' which slowly rolled along the usual 
route by way of ' le Pont au Change, le quai de la 
Megisserie,' the * Rue St Honore,' to the ' Place de la 
Revolution/ Lamarche did not .excite much popular 
fury ; — that was reserved for Madame Roland. She 
was ' baited with the rabble's curse/ insulted and 
outraged by obscene epithets and citations from 
Hebert, and passed along amid savage howls of 
6 A la guillotine ! 

Her death-ride was rendered terrible by the callous 
cruelty and devilish mockery so characteristic of a 
French mob. She remained superbly serene. The 
Spartan heroine of the Gironde never blenched as the 
tumbril passed through a ferocious, surging crowd 
which overwhelmed her with injuries. The very 'tri- 
coteuses ' of the guillotine could not disturb her lofty 
calmness. She, dying for no crime, passed to her 
sacrifice as to a crowning triumph and a regal vie- 



MADAME ROLAND. 309 

tory. She was dressed in white, her robe ' parsemee 
de bouquets de couleur rose ; ' her long, dark hair 
flowed below her waist. An eye-witness, M. Tissot, 
tells us (Histoire de la Revolution) that, when he 
saw her pass, ' ses yeux lancoient de vifs eclairs, son 
teint brilloit de fraicheur et d'eclat : un sourire plein 
de charme erroit sur ses levres : cependant elle etoit 
serieuse et ne jouoit pas avec la mort.' Her nature 
was too strong and calm for any levity, or affectation 
of levity, in that terrible hour. The tumbril passed 
by the former dwelling of her father at the corner of 
the ' Quai des Orfevres et du Pont Neuf.' She gazed 
— with what feelings ? — at the home of her youth, and 
of the dear dead that she was about to join. 

Happily, her woman's tenderness was called forth 
by the pitiable state of Lamarche. As she was more 
than woman, so he was less than man. Overwhelmed 
by the terrors of the death so fast approaching, he 
succumbed to abject cowardice. She soothed, con- 
soled, animated him. Her soft but penetrating voice 
gave him all the comfort of which his terror was 
capable. She had never seen him until they met in 
the ' charrette.' His fears could not infect her. 
Her humanity did assist him. 

The vehicle stopped. It was backed against the 
ladder which led up to the platform of the high scaf- 
fold ; from out of which arose the red upright posts, 
the cross-beam, and the triangular glaive of the hide- 
ous guillotine. Sanson usually executed women first, 



3IO STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

but Madame Roland, to spare her companion, fore- 
went her privilege. ' Pouvez-vous ' — she said to San- 
son, who objected to a departure from rule and cus- 
tom, * pouvez-vous refuser a une femme sa derniere 
requete ? ' She watched and waited while poor La- 
marche was beheaded. Then her turn came. With 
a fine, if unconscious irony, a colossal clay statue of 
Liberty was erected close to the permanent revolu- 
tionary scaffold. When she was strapped to the plank, 
she looked at this statue of satire, and said, ' O 
Liberte ! comme on t'a jouee ! ' The plank fell into 
its place ; the red-dripping blade descended rapidly 
— and Madame Roland had passed into the great 
mystery of Death. It is said — but the saying rests 
upon no good evidence — that she asked, when on the 
scaffold, for pen and paper to write down her last 
impressions ; the story is improbable, as scaffolds are 
not often furnished with writing materials ; but she 
may, on the road to death, have expressed some wish 
to record her last thoughts. Goethe says, * Madame 
Roland, when on the scaffold, asked for writing mate- 
rials to note down the singular thoughts that had 
occurred to her on her last journey. Pity that they 
were refused to her, because, at the end of life, 
thoughts come to the composed spirit which before were 
unthinkable. Such thoughts are like sacred daemons, 
which descend shiningly upon the summit of the past.' 
It is certain that the report was widely circulated. 
If made, we can only echo Goethe's regretful wish. 



MADAME ROLAND. 311 

A certain M. Bertin, a kind of George Selwyn, was 
an amateur of executions; and a man with this mor- 
bid propensity had unexampled opportunities, during 
the Revolution, for gratifying his tastes. He was a 
regular attendant on the scaffold, and he witnessed the 
execution of Madame Roland. M. Bertin remarks, 
'Quand le couteau eut tranche la tete' (of Madame 
Roland), l deux jets de sang enormes s'elancerent du 
tronc mutile, ce qu'on ne voit guere : le plus souvent 
la tete tombe decoloree, et le sang, que l'emotion de 
ce moment terrible avoit fait refluer vers le cceur, jail- 
loissoit foiblement, ou goutte a goutte/ M. Bertin 
means to argue that, owing to Madame Roland's un- 
usual courage, her blood flowed in an unusual manner ; 
but, unfortunately, physiology does not support M. 
Bertin's theory. No supremacy of courage would 
alter the laws under which the blood circulates and 
flows. A few days after Madame Roland's death, 

La Feuille du Salut Public 
announces to women ' un grand exemple ' — the lessons 
being the execution of three women — 

1 Marie Antoinette, 

2 Olympe de Gouge, 

3 Madame Roland. 

The Queen is stigmatised as ' une epouse debauchee/ 
and the ' Feuille ' adds, — ' Son nom sera a jamais un 
horreur a la posterite,' a prediction which has been 
only imperfectly fulfilled. Of Olympe it is stated 
that ' La loi ait puni cette conspiratrice d'avoir oublie 



312 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

les vertus qui conviennent a son sexe.' The facts 
about this unfortunate creature were, that, animated by 
the pure vanity which creates a desire to be talked 
about, she had issued placards preaching concord 
between all parties and factions. The bloody answer 
was, to shear off her light head. 

Of the * femme Roland,' the ' Feuille' says that she 
6 fut un monstre sous tous les rapports. Sa conten- 
ance dedaigneuse envers le peuple, et les juges 
choisis par lui ; Fopiniatrete orgueilleuse de ses 
reponses, sa gaiete ironique, et cette fermete dont 
alle faisait parade dans son trajet du Palais de 
"Justice a la Place de la Revolution,' etc., etc. 
This was addressed ' aux Republicaines.' Madame 
Roland's courage and irony had evidently irritated as 
well as impressed the Revolutionary Tribunal. The 
news of her death reached two men for whom it had 
peculiar interest — her lover, and her husband. 

Roland was in hiding — in danger of certain death 
if caught — at Rouen. Madame Roland predicted that 
he would destroy himself when he should hear of her 
execution; and on 15th November he started from 
his asylum, and, at a distance of about four leagues 
from Rouen, the miserable man perished, in a high 
Roman manner, by running on the blade of a sword- 
stick. He committed suicide most effectually, as he 
appeared, when found, as if he were 'endormi.' On a 
piece of paper, found upon the corpse, was written, 
' Non la crainte, mais Findignation — J'ai quitte ma 



MADAME ROLAND. 313. 

retraite au moment ou j'ai appris qu'on alloit egorger 
ma femme ; et je ne veux plus rester su'r une terre 
couverte de crimes/ Such was the unhappy ending 
of the wretched ex-minister, who, as his great feat in 
life, had achieved so rare and high a wife. 

The news of Madame Roland's death upon the 
scaffold produced a different and a stronger effect 
upon Buzot. He was thrown into a state of 
despair, which touched upon madness, and he re- 
mained for some days almost bereft of his senses. 
He was then in hiding for the dear life ; — hunted from 
place to place, in want, in misery, in danger. Upon 
receiving the fatal news, he wrote to M. Jerome Le 
Tellier, — ' Elle n'est plus — elle n'est plus, mon ami ! 
Les scelerats Font assassinee ! Jugez s'il me reste 
quelque chose a regretter sur la terre ! ' Buzot, 
Petion, Barbaroux kept together in their retreat, but 
the details of their wretched wanderings are not well 
known. Half a league from Castillon, they came 
one day upon a local rustic * fete/ and thought that 
they were recognised. Flying into a neighbouring 
pine-wood, Barbaroux tried to commit suicide with a 
pistol, but the ball broke his jaw without causing 
death. He was found, seized, and sent to Bourdeaux, 
where, mutilated as he was, he was at once flung 
upon the plank, and guillotined two days later, 20th 
July 1794. The dead bodies of Petion and of Buzot 
were found in a field, partially devoured by wild 
beasts — probably by wolves. They had, at least y 



3 14 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

escaped the guillotine. A month later, when the 
revulsion of 9 Thermidor, and the death of Robespierre 
occurred, these poor Girondins would have been safe ; 
because, when Robespierre fell, the suspected and pro- 
scribed were declared out of danger. 

It has seemed good to follow the main current of 
Madame Roland's life and fortunes, without inter- 
rupting the narrative to dwell upon the episode of 
her life — her profound passion for Buzot — but now it 
may be in place to devote to this important matter 
the attention which it so amply merits. 

Carlyle ('French Revolution,' chap, iii., Avignon) 
states that Barbaroux was the lover of Madame 
Roland ; but this statement, if a natural error, is yet 
wholly erroneous. Carlyle produced his history in 
1837 ; the great discoveries of the correspondence of 
Buzot and of Madame Roland (discoveries to be 
more fully alluded to hereafter) were made in 1864. 

Francois - Nicolas - Leonard Buzot was born at 
Evreux, 1st March 1760 (therefore was six years 
younger than Madame Roland), came to Paris, as 
* Depute du Department de TEure,' and in Paris be- 
came acquainted with the Rolands. He was chosen 
deputy in 1792. He was attached, by ardent sym- 
pathy, to the party of the Gironde, and this sympathy 
increased when Madame Roland became the actual 
leader of this body of politicians. He arrived in 
Paris at the time of that ferment of ideas, of that 
passionate partisanship, which were the consequences 



MADAME ROLAND. 315 

of the Revolution. He was of a melancholy tem- 
perament, tender, sensitive, and of the highest 
courage. Born in another time, he might have been 
a poet ; placed in the strain of his stormy day, he 
became, as an orator, the effective mouthpiece of 
Madame Roland. He was a devotee of justice as 
of liberty. He loved his country ; he • worshipped 
humanity ; and the Revolution filled him with san- 
guine hopes for the future of both. Like most of 
the Girondins, he was an idealist in politics ; like 
a poet, he found his ideal incorporated in Madame 
Roland. He was capable of passionate adoration 
for a woman ; and he met the woman that he could, 
and did adore. With high thoughts seated in a heart 
of honour, he could love a woman almost desperately, 
and could yet love honour more. Madame Roland 
-could descend to attract, but could yet never stoop to 
allure. Both were virtuous in the truest, in the most 
difficult sense ; both could love to the height of 
highest natures, yet neither could succumb to vice, 
or become guilty of crime. Their love was noble and 
was pure. She had a daring, a defiant confidence in 
her own power to resist a temptation, which yet she 
felt to be terrible. 

Hence the noble, ideal romance of the sad lives of 
these ill-fated lovers. She was capable of forbearance, 
of self-control, she had learned * zu entsagen ; ' and 
Buzot was worthy of her. She was the nobler for her 
love ; and he was three times less unworthy. Her vehe- 



316 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

ment nature could not love without passion ; but her 
pure, proud virtue could hold passion in a leash, and 
restrain it on this side of base indulgence. She loved 
with the soul rather than with the senses. She fore- 
saw, when she wedded Roland, the possibility of some 
future passion, but she had a just confidence in her 
own virtue. Her virtue w r as individual — it was no- 
part of her stormy and licentious day. Wandering 
thought was with her never translated into wanton> 
action. She raised her lover to her own altitude,, 
and so they loved ideally, intensely ; but without 
reproach. No stain rests upon the fair fame of either.. 
She could theorise, with the greatest freedom, upon 
the relations between the sexes — she could feel keenly 
her own unhappiness — but she would allow to her 
own conduct no licence. She was not squeamish, but 
she was essentially virtuous. She was unnaturally 
linked and tied to the miserable mediocrity of the 
pompous and venerable Roland ; she felt all the love 
that woman can feel for Buzot ; and yet she remained 
a loyal wife. Characteristically, Madame Roland 
informed her husband of her love for Buzot. She 
records, — ' Mon mari n'a pu supporter l'idee de la 
moindre alteration dans son empire. 5 But the thing 
was not to be altered or avoided, and Roland plunged 
more actively into politics. She adds, — ' II n'y avait 
pas parite ' (between her husband and herself) ' il 
y avait de trop Tune ou l'autre de ces superiorites,, 
un caractere dominateur et une difference de vingt 



MADAME ROLAND. 317 

annees. Roland etait doue de toutes les qualities 
qui commandent l'estime ; il lui manquait celles qui 
concilient la bienveillance.' Had shebeen able really 
to love Roland there would have been no passion for 
Buzot. 

Buzot had a wife, of whom Madame Roland says, — 
1 Qui ne paroissoit point a son niveau, mais qui etoit 
honnete.' The poor woman might not be up to the 
level of her husband's character, but yet she might 
suffer from his passion for another greater woman. 
There is nowhere any record to be found of Madame 
Buzot's feelings. Buzot adopts the same attitude 
towards his wife that Madame Roland does towards 
her husband. Both lovers speak of their partners 
with ' respectful sympathy,' but with no warmer 
feeling. In the case of Madame Roland this stand- 
point was natural, or even necessary. Roland was 
her dreary father. Of him Lemontey says, — \ Son 
mari ressomblait a un Quaker dont elle eut ete la 
fille.' She was devoted to his health, his comfort, 
his career and reputation — but where was love ? Her 
heart could hold no woman's love for the precise, 
dictatorial, elderly pedant. Not only his age, but 
also his character was against the virtuous man. As 
regards Buzot, — * II avait la figure noble, la taille 
elegante.' He dressed well. He was finely courteous, 
graceful, sympathetic, and he had all the lovely and 
lofty qualities which could gain her respect and win 
her affection. 



318 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

The nature and degree of their mutual passion may 
best be read in some extracts from those few letters,, 
still extant, which she wrote to him during her long 
imprisonment, and which were, no doubt, found upon 
his corpse. These letters paint, with singular clear- 
ness, the strong woman and her strong love. Her 
style in these letters, as indeed in all her writings, is r 
broadly speaking, simple, sensuous, passionate. 

The first is dated ' L'Abbaye, 22 Juin.' She speaks 
of letters from him which had reached her. < Combien 
je les relis ! je les presse sur mon coeur, je les couvres 
demes baisers ; jen'esperois plusd'en recevoir ! . . . / 
Correspondence with friends was, for the prisoner,, 
always uncertain and even unsafe. 

'Quant a moi, je saurai subir les derniers exces de 
la tyrannie, de maniere a ce que mon exemple ne 
soit pas non plus inutile .... Mort, tourmens r 
douleur, ne sont rien pour moi, je puis tout defier ;. 
va, je vivrai jusqu'a ma derniere heure sans perdre 
un seul instant dans le treoble d'indignes agitations 

mais ne vois tu pas aussi qu'en me trouvant 

seule c'est avec toi que je demeure ? Ainsi, par la 
captivite, je me sacrifie a mon epoux, je me conserve 
a mon ami, il je dois a mes bourreaux de concilier 
le devoir et l'amour. Ne me plains pas ! ' 

If she owed it to her executioners to reconcile love 
and duty, would that duty, under happier circum- 
stances, have resisted for ever the instincts of love ? 

' Va ! nous ne pouvons cesser d'etre reciproquement 



MADAME ROLAND. 319 

dignes des sentimens que nous nous sommes inspires : 
on n'est pas malheureux avec cela. Adieu, mon ami ; 
mon bien-aime, adieu ! ' 

True woman ! how she caresses with her pen the 
man that she loves. 

The second letter is dated 3 Juillet. She says, — 
'Dis-moi, connois-tu des moments plus doux que 
ceux passes dans Tinnocence et le charme d'une 
affection que la nature avoue et que regie la delicat- 
esse, qui fait hommage au devoir des privations qu'il 
lui impose, et se nourrit de la force meme de les 
supporter ? Connois-tu de plus grand avantage que 
celui d'etre superieur a Tadversite, a la mort, et de 
trouver dans son coeur de quoi gouter, et embellir la 
vie jusqu'a, son dernier souffle ? — As-tu jamais mieux 
eprouve ces effets que de l'attachment qui nous lie, 
malgre les contradictions de la societe et les horreurs 
de l'oppression ? ' 

• •••••••• 

* Va, je sens trop bien ce qui m'est impose dans le 
cours naturel des choses pour me plaindre de la 
violence qui l'a detourne. Si je dois mourir — eh 
bien ! je connois de la vie ce quelle a de meilleur, et 
sa duree ne m'obligeroit peut-etre qu'a de nouveaux 

sacrifices Je trouvois delicieux de reunir 

les moyens de lui etre utile a une maniere d'etre qui 
me laissoit plus a toi. J'aimerois a lui sacrifier ma 
vie pour acquerir de donner a toi seul mon dernier 
soupir.' 'Lui' is, of course, Roland. Noble as is 



320 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

her sacrifice of love to virtue, there is yet something 
sinister and terrible in this tremendous conflict be- 
tween passion and duty. Passion strains upon its 
leash almost to the breaking point. < Puisse cette 
lettre te parvenir. bientot, te porter un nouveau 
temoignage de mes sentimens inalterables, te com- 
muniquer la tranquillite que je goute, et joindre a tout 
ce que tu peux eprouver et faire de genereux et 
d'utile le charme inexprimable des affections que les 
tyrans ne connurent jamais, des affections qui servent 
a la fois d'epreuves et de recompenses a la vertu, 
des affections qui donnent du prix a la vie et rendent 
^uperieur a tous les maux ! ' 

It is observable that, in all these letters, it is the 
^oul that speaks, and not the senses. If Madame 
Roland were ' faite pour la volupte,' she at least knew 
how to dominate all ignoble impulses. Again, the 
letters are written in the sad gloom of a prison, with 
death hovering near, and ever ready to strike. The 
only certain object seen through barred windows was 
the constantly present vision of the red and ghastly 
guillotine. Love wrote in the shadow of Death. The 
flying hours were terrible and stern. 

The third letter is dated 6th July. 

Madame Roland had procured for herself a minia- 
ture of her lover, and she writes to Buzot about 
'this dear picture.' 'Je me suis fait apporter, il y 
as quatre jours, this dear picture, que par une sorte 
de superstition je ne voulois pas mettre dans ma 



MADAME ROLAND. 321 

prison ; mais pourquoi done se refuser cette douce 
image, foible et precieux de dommagement de la 
presence de l'objet? Elle est sur mon cceur, cachee 
a tous les yeux, sentie a tous les moments, et sou- 
vent baignee de mes larmes. Va, je suis penetree de 
ton courage, honoree de ton attachement et glorieuse 
de tout ce que l'un et l'autre pevrent inspirer a ton 
ame fiere et sensible. Je ne puis croire que le ciel 
ne reserve que des epreuves a des sentiments si purs 

et si dignes de sa faveur Quiconque sait 

aimer comme nous porte avec soi le principe des 
plus grandes et des meilleures actions, le prix des 
sacrifices les plus penibles, le dedommagement de 
tous les maux. Adieu, mon bien-aime, adieu ! ' 

This appeal to Heaven is remarkable. She had 
broken with Catholicism, nay, even with Christianity ; 
but, though she was a pagan, she could never become 
a materialist. The lingering traces of her olden faith 
are visible in this appeal to Heaven, which, if illogical, 
was, at least, imaginative. But it is only her love for 
Buzot that can turn her thought, or her fancy, toward 
a Heaven, long abjured but not quite forgotten. 
Faith was lost, but a faint memory of it still sur- 
vived, as does the light of the sun after it has set 
below the horizon. 

The fourth is the last of her letters that have been 
traced ; and it was certainly received by Buzot. It is 
dated 7th July. 

1 Comme je cheris les fers ou il m'est libre de 

x 



322 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

t'aimer sans partage et de m'occuper de toi sans 
cesse ! Ici, toute autre occupation est suspendue : 
je ne me dois plus qu'a qui m'amie et merite si bien 
d'etre cheri.' 

There is in Madame Roland no coquetry or affecta- 
tion. Her great heart always dares to speak out the 
fulness of its meaning. 

' Vous embellissez le plus triste sejour, vous faites 
regner au fond des cachots un bonheur apres lequel 
soupirent quelquefois vainement l'habitant des palais.' 

All her letters were written in direst haste, and 
M. Dauban points out the occasional slips of grammar 
caused by hurry. Facsimiles of these letters are now 
lying before me. The handwriting is small, but clear. 
There was no time for corrections. They were 
written stealthily, under danger of interruption and 
interference ; and they were the chief joy of an 
imprisoned woman. 

' O toi ! si cher et si digne de l'etre ! ' She speaks 
of her position relatively to Roland as one ' ou des 
obligations saintes and terribles contraignoient mes 
facultes et dechirrvient mon faible cceur.' There is 
no self-pity in her letters. A ' faible cceur' is only 
spoken of in connexion with the loathed tie to 
Roland. Of her cell she says, — ' Elle est large 
de maniere a souffrir une chaise a cote du lit. 
C'est la que, devant une petite table, je lis, je 
dessine, et j'ecris ; c'est la que, ton portrait sur 
mon sein ou sous mes yeux, je remercie le ciel de 



MADAME ROLAND. 323 

t'avoir connu, de m'avoir fait gouter le bien inexprim- 
able d'aimer et d'etre cherie avec cette generosite, 
cette delicatesse, que ne connaitront jamais les ames 
vulgaires, et qui sont au dessus de tous leurs plaisirs.' 

In her ' dernieres pensees,' in those burning lines, 
written upon the very verge of life, she thus, for the last 
time, addresses Buzot, — ' Et toi que je n'ose nommer ! 
toi que la plus terrible des passions n'empecha pas de 
respecter les barrieres de la vertu, t'affligerais-tu de 
me voir te preceder aux lieux ou nous pourrons 
nous aimer sans crime, ou rien ne nous empechera 
d'etre unis? ' 

Love was, with her, a terrible passion, and it was 
a source of righteous satisfaction to her to think that 
the barriers of virtue had not been overstepped. Her 
imagination again plays fondly with the idea that she 
and Buzot shall meet again after death, in realms in 
which love shall love its fill, without crime, without 
sorrow, without remorse. On the day after the above 
lines were written, death, and what may come after it. 
were no longer mysteries for her. 

The portrait (' this dear picture ') had wholly dis- 
appeared until, in 1864, M. Vatel picked it up by 
chance at a ' bric-a-brac ' shop. The probability is 
that, just before her death, Madame Roland had 
given it to Champagneux to be delivered to Buzot. 
and that it was found upon him after his death. 

Towards the end of November 1863, a young man 
offered for sale, at a ' libraire quai Voltaire/ several 



324 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Girondin manuscripts and letters, for which he ob- 
tained fifty francs. Among these were the letters of 
Madame Roland to Buzot. They also were probably 
found by peasants on the corpse of Buzot, and were 
carelessly preserved, without an idea of their value, 
till some ' young man ' knew enough about them to 
sell them for a few francs. Pictures and letters go 
through romances of their own. 

M. Dauban, in his ' Etude,' gives, as a frontispiece, 
an engraving of the ' dear picture,' worn so long on 
the heart of Madame Roland, and on which her 
loving eyes had so often rested in the reveries of her 
passionate longing for the dear original. Happily 
this picture was not buried with her or with Buzot. 

The face is rather short and broad, the eyes are 
large, well opened, tender ; the features are finely 
modelled, but round the lips plays a kind of sarcastic, 
sorrowful disdain, the chronic attitude of Buzot's 
mind towards life, and man, and fate. The portrait 
expresses an elevated nature, full of capacity for love, 
full of courage, culture, and of pride. Sorrows of the 
heart (she says) deepened a constitutional tendency 
to melancholy in Buzot. The cheek is lean and 
hollow, like that of a man worn by passion and by 
grief. The traits speak of sensibility and of gentle- 
ness. It is interesting to look upon the effigy of a 
man so loved by Madame Roland, and so worthy of 
her love. 

The features of Madame Roland are not regular, 



MADAME ROLAND. 32 J 

but the expression of head and face is singularly 
striking and attractive ; they possess, indeed, a sort 
of fascination, a mixture of sweetness and of strength, 
which enable us to realise her influence over con- 
temporaries — over Buzot. The forehead is unusually 
large and broad. Upon that brow shame were 
ashamed to sit. The chin is full ; the mouth is 
extraordinarily sweet and mobile ; the large eyes are 
full of genius and of love. Her long, dark hair flows 
in curls over shoulders and down the back. Not a 
tall woman, but a creature exquisite in womanly 
charm and in rare force of character. Frank, fearless, 
noble, is her most expressive, her eloquent face. The 
bust is large and well formed. Clear will and heroic 
courage speak out from the face's sensitive lines. 
There is nothing ignoble, treacherous, little, in the 
sublime character of this head — a head which was to 
be severed by the cruel axe of the ruthless guillotine. 
* Natura la fece, e poi ruppe la stampa.' Not easily 
will the world again need or produce another Madame 
Roland. She lived in a fatal, a 

. . . dark and dreary time, 

The heavens all blood, the weaned earth all crime. 

Did Madame Roland forgive her enemies ? I 
think not. She rose superior to them ; they could 
not daunt or even much depress her ; but the savage 
injustice committed against her love, her hope, her 
life, by the brutal butchers of the Revolution, would 
rouse indignation in a soul so fiery and so proud. 



326" STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Marie Antoinette, with wrongs as deep, hurled to 
death from a much more resplendent position, could, 
and did, under the influences of Christianity, forgive 
those who had so unpardonably trespassed against 
her. She left vengeance to God ; but Madame 
Roland, who could not rise to the Christian valour 
of humility, had some hope of vengeance from man. 
She had a great soul, and she possessed it fully. She 
had a large heart, and Buzot filled it nobly. She had 
ambition and sense of right — France and Liberty dis- 
tended these passions to excess — but forgiveness she 
had not. The combative element was strong in her. 

The Girondins ' were not condemnable, but were 
most unfortunate/ Liberty had no purer or more 
ardent champions, but in that fierce time of unbridled 
passions they could not withstand the thunders of 
Danton, the stealthy guile of Robespierre, or the 
blood-thirsty ravings of Marat. The ' privileged 
class ' of the Revolution — the mob — demanded more 
blood than the Gironde would give. They were not 
coarse or wicked enough to rule in a demented hour, 
which thirsted for the blood of aristocrats, which 
dreaded furiously the foe beyond the frontier. Nor 
had the Gironde a statesman. Vergniaud was an 
orator ; Brissot was a formalist ; Madame Roland was 
an inspiration. With her, politics were a passion. 
She had the wisdom of genius, but not the strategy 
of policy. Woman-like, she was a partisan ; she felt 
sympathy or dyspathy ; she loved favourites, and she 



MADAME ROLAND. 327 

loathed antagonists. Her likes and dislikes were 
pure in motive, but impolitic in action. To the 
Girondins, as a party, she did harm. Their strength 
lay in the confidence of the ' bourgeoisie ; ' but she did 
not please the middle class, nor did she care to win 
the populace. Men resented the only thinly concealed 
leadership of a woman. But for her, Danton, who 
preferred the Gironde to Robespierre, Marat, Hebert, 
would have allied himself to the nobler party ; but 
he found himself repelled by her indignation, de- 
graded by her scorn. He became the dangerous and 
deadly enemy of the Girondins. In those fierce days, 
men fought duels with the guillotine for a weapon ; 
Danton turned its blade against the woman - led 
party which would not forgive or forget the blood of 
September. * Les morts seuls ne reviennent pas ; ' 
and to oppose a party, meant to exterminate its 
members. Wholesale massacres became unnecessary 
owing to the activity of judicial murders. The 
Gironde was a party fitted only for fairer and for 
nobler times. The vices of a rampant democracy 
are only a multiplication by myriads of the selfish 
vices of an irresponsible aristocracy. 

The fate and the failure of the Girondins contain a 
pregnant lesson for the ' liberals ' of all lands who, 
impelled by theories or actuated by ambition, who, 
thoughtlessly or wickedly, for party purposes or out 
of lust for rule, stimulate and develop into frantic 
action the fierce passions of a demoniac democracy. 



328 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Such 'liberals' raise a devil that they cannot lay; 
they create a monster that they cannot control. After 
going beyond their convictions in the direction of 
injustice, cruelty, oppression, such 'liberals' have the 
mortification of finding themselves passed in the race 
for popular favour by others wickeder than them- 
selves ; and then they see themselves, with a name 
tainted by history, overthrown and doomed to perish 
and to fall. 

But, before failing and falling, such men may do 
much to bring about the decadence of a nation, and 
the disgrace of humanity. They may enfranchise 
and embolden all lawless passions, mean ambitions, 
and selfish lusts ; they may degrade all authority, all 
virtue, and all wisdom ; they may transfer rule to 
anarchy, and hand over power to the ruthless hands 
of an ignorant and conscienceless mob, and of such 
leaders as it may choose. There is a just retribution 
which sternly awaits all such doctrinaire attempts to 
rule by trying to govern ungovernable mobs, and to 
retain influence by pandering to the worst passions 
of an infuriated people. The errors of the Girondins 
were terribly expiated. A revolution in France, at 
the end of the last century, was an event necessary — 
inevitable ; but the pity is, that the revolution, when 
it came, was so base and bloodthirsty, so demonic 
and uncreative, that it ended in a military despotism, 
in an absolute imperialism, and led to the restoration 
of the old line of kings. Indeed, nothing in the rule 



MADAME ROLAND. 329 

or misrule, of the ' ancien regime/ was so inhuman or 
wicked as the revolution itself. Insolent, selfish, 
rotten as the old Government was, it was surpassed in 
wicked cruelty by a Committee of Public Safety, by 
the revolutionary tribunal, by massacre and murder. 
The Revolution lasted five years, and committed, 
during that brief period, more crimes than the mon- 
archy which it shattered. It w r as no reform. It 
declined into inhuman ferocity, and lawless outrage. 
It was ruled by men as mean as they were foul. The 
tyrants of old had their infamous Bastille, and their 
abominable ' lettres de cachet ;' the Revolution created 
many Bastilles, and invented letters of death. The 
men of the sections, the butchers of the Abbaye, 
entered the armies of Napoleon ; and sansculottes 
undoubtedly look better in military uniform. The 
France of the guillotine became for a time the France 
of glory, of conquest, of dominion. All high-souled 
men — men who yet loved liberty — as Burke and 
Schiller, were revolted by it. It was a time of im- 
placable hatreds, and of most deadly enmities. Goethe 
says, — [ True it is, that I could be no friend of the French 
Revolution, for I stood too near to atrocities which daily 
and hourly revolted me, while its beneficial results were 
not then to be foreseen. I was also fully convinced 
that no great revolution can be the fault of a people, 
but must be due to the Government.' These words were 
spoken in 1824, to Eckermann ; and they may be held 
to contain almost the ■ dernier mot' on the subject. 



330 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

Madame Roland stands vividly before us as an 
imperishable instance of sincerity and strength, — ' Und 
was nicht reizt, ist todt,' says the Princess in Tasso ; 
but Madame Roland remains vital in her fulness of 
womanly charm. Her personality subdues as her 
character impresses us. Beneath the heroine is the 
woman ; tender, devoted, loving, winning. Those 
lips can break into a seductive smile, or can become 
tremulous with moving eloquence. The evidence of 
her personal influence is overwhelming. Her mind 
is active with fecundity of idea ; is quivering with 
fulness of vitality. In her life and vigour she is 
intense. She is always animated, vivacious ; and 
neither in speaking nor in writing can she be re- 
proached with a single dull or trivial sentence. Even 
large assemblies of men were awed, and were delighted 
by her. On 7th December 1792, she had a singular 
triumph in the Convention itself. La Montagne was 
vanquished by her grace, her talent, her soft eloquence. 
A certain ' citoyen Achille Viard,' a spy of the Con- 
vention, returned from London, and accused Roland 
of being engaged in a conspiracy for the restoration 
of the King. Roland denied the preposterous charge, 
but was wise enough to suggest that his wife should 
be sent for. She came ; * and with her high clearness, 
dissipated this Viard into air and despicability.' 
When she appeared at the bar, she was received with 
loud applause. Modestly, and yet with firmness, she 
demented and disproved the lie; and the admiring 



MADAME ROLAND. 331 

President, speaking the voice of the Assembly, invited 
the citizeness Roland (nee Phlipon) to the ' honneurs 
de la seance.' The Gironde was delighted at the 
success of its fair ally ; and Madame Roland had 
achieved a public triumph. Had she been a man, 'la 
Gironde' had not wanted a leader. Condorcet speaks 
of Robespierre as being * without an idea in his head, 
or a feeling in his heart.' Madame Roland had both 
ideas and feelings. 

4 Le style c'est l'homme;' et Madame Roland's 
character is perfectly expressed in her writings. Her 
vivid, virile style is characteristic of her. She had 
force, clearness, imagination, irony, wit — but humour 
never. Reason, perhaps, predominates over imagina- 
tion ; but it must be remembered that the writings by 
which we now judge her, are all coloured by the fever 
flush of the day in which she lived and moved and 
had her being. Much was written with breathless 
rapidity ; but with her, fluency never degenerates into 
verbosity. It w r as emphatically not a time for humour. 
The relations of events to life and death were too 
serious, and were too terrible — the mind was im- 
pressed with a mould of sternness. During the time 
in which her later letters were written, Charles Henri 
Sanson, the headsman of the period (see his Memoirs), 
records that — ' I am seized with fever as soon as I 

enter the Conciergerie I do not boast of 

extraordinary squeamishness — I have seen too much 
blood not to be callous. If what I feel be not pit}', it 



332 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

is a derangement of the nerves. Perhaps I am 
punished by the Almighty for cowardly obedience 
to meek justice/ What may this Sanson have felt 
when he executed Madame Roland ? 

Her plenitude of talent is always valiant, earnest, 
intrepid, weighty. She is never sentimental ; she is 
never weak. There is occasional badinage in her 
letters to Bosc, Bancal des Issarts; there is tenderness 
in her correspondence with the Demoiselles Cannet ; 
there is passion, deep but never wild, in those last, 
saddest letters to Buzot ; there is frank friendship in 
her notes to Champagneux (' cher Jany') and to 
other trusted friends. Ardent for ideal liberty, 
uplifted above the ignorant present by a sublime 
patriotism, conscious of power which she, as woman, 
had to exercise under great restraint, she attained to 
victory only by means of self-repression. She died 
at the age of thirty-nine ; but nearly six months of 
those years were spent in captivity, rendered doubly 
haggard by the chance of death at any moment; 
while her child was torn from her, her husband was 
in hiding — and her lover a hunted fugitive. We 
judge her, from the literary side, chiefly by her 
Memoirs, and by some of her letters. These were 
written for the most part under sorrow, danger, diffi- 
culties, in the prison of Sainte Pelagie. Marie An- 
toinette was born 2d November 1 75 5 ; Madame 
Roland was born 18th March 1754 — they were almost 
of the same age ; and they shared the same doom. 



MADAME ROLAND. 333 

The names of these tvvo victims are inseparably con- 
nected with the history of the French Revolution. 
The ' Zeitkolorit ' around them is the dark, red back- 
ground of a hellish time, against which these two 
radiant and royal female figures stand out distinctly. 
One was an aristocrat of birth and rank ; the other 
was an aristocrat of genius and of energy. The one 
under supernatural, the other under natural consola- 
tion, they showed equal courage when the end came. 

In the dim darkness of dungeons, in the glare of 
light on the high scaffold, from out of which the grim 
apparatus of death affronted the outraged sky, they 
both stand forth resplendently, and neither blenched 
beneath the gory guillotine. The daughter of the 
Caesars, the daughter of the engraver — both ended 
their careers in the same tragic way. Each was 
unworthily and unhappily married ; but one only left 
a mourning lover. They stand on high in history on 
that lofty platform of the scaffold, round which 
surges a vast yelling crowd that joyed ferociously in 
the deaths of two such women. The scene of horror 
in the ' Place de la Revolution ' found the Christian 
and the Pagan alike calm and undismayed. They 
are the glory and the shame of the Revolution. 
They lend it grace, and reflect upon it disgrace. It 
is a glory to the Revolution that it should have 
developed a Madame Roland ; it is a disgrace to it 
that it should have murdered her. Such deaths 
cover with ignominy a movement which suggests sal- 



334 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

vation carried out by fiends. Martyrs of the Revolu- 
tion, these women lend to it an imperishable, tragic 
attraction of great terror and of most splendid 
courage. That Revolution, in its desire to brand its 
victims with obloquy, called the one a ' monstre,' the 
other an ' horreur ; ' but their sad, high fates stamp 
the Revolution itself as a monster and a horror. The 
judgment of posterity has reversed their sentences 
and rescued their memories. 

When first she met the man who was formed to 
fill up the void in her empty heart, she felt that 
Buzot ' aurait pu etre son amant ; ' but, while she 
indulged her ideal passion, she could trust her own 
virtue, and could resolve that love should never yield 
to shame. She could not be untrue — even to Roland. 
' Jamais l'idee de l'abandonner ne lui vint a l'esprit.' 
He was old, was suffering, and he leant on her. 
Duty constrained her lofty spirit. 

A conquest how hard and how glorious ! The 
manners of her time would have sanctioned an 
ordinary French * liaison ; ' but such baseness was 
not possible to the fervid Madame Roland. And 
then the contrast between the two men ! How 
terrible must have been the struggle between love 
and duty in her proud yet passionate heart ! And 
yet she held firmly to the sanctity of the marriage 
tie — a tie rendered so repulsive by that Roland 
* parlant d'un ton monotone et toujours de lui- 
meme, roide et cassant.' While Buzot was an ideal 



MADAME ROLAND. 335 

lover, who could fill her heart, stir her imagination, 
excite her senses. The woman remains glorious ! 

In the last days of the Gironde in the Convention, 
Buzot, in the audacity of despair, spoke with her 
voice, and uttered her thought. 

Once she found a false friend ; when that Lan- 
thenas, whom she called her brother, terrified by La 
Montagne, turned traitor to her, and to the cause. 
Her grief and shame and sorrow were great as was 
the nobleness of her nature. 

Usually, she inspired friends up to the level of her 
own loftiness. Brave Henriette Cannet, knowing 
well the risk that she ran, would have sacrificed her 
own life in order to save that of Madame Roland. 
She would have exchanged dresses with her friend, 
and would have remained in Sainte Pelagie, while 
Madame Roland made her escape from the prison. 
But Madame Roland was too generous to accept the 
sacrifice. She thought also of the probable fate of 
the poor gaoler, who had been kind to her ; and she 
remained voluntarily in her dungeon, and paid the 
fearful forfeit to which she had looked forward for so 
long. The example of her death might, she thought, 
serve liberty. 

Then came the Conciergerie, the Revolutionary 
Tribunal, the mock trial, the dreadful sentence ; and 
then came the long ride to the ' Place de la Revolu- 
tion,' the last sacrifice to Lamarche, and death by the 
guillotine. All was over except the fame that never 



336 STUDIES IN HISTORY, LEGEND, ETC. 

dies, the example of heroism which will never lose 
its influence, and the human interest in a woman 
which leads us now to study her life, and to deplore 
her death. Her longing for justice from posterity is 
amply gratified. She remains heroine as victim. 

* O liberte ! s'ecria-t-elle, comme on ta jouee. Puis 
la planche bascula/ .... 

That France which then erected the colossal 
clay statue of Liberty close by the guillotine, should 
now erect there a statue to the woman who so 
thoroughly understood, and so fully exemplified, 
what French liberty meant — to fair and glorious 
Madame Roland ! 



the end. 



500 : S. : I : 84. 



COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH- 



A CATALOGUE OF 



BOOKS for the YOUNG, 



OF ALL AGES, 

SUITABLE FOR PRESENTS AND SCHOOL PRIZES, 
Arranged according to Prices, 

From Fourpence to Seven Shillings and 
Sixpence Each. 




^ fro tfocedtoNe** 6t * 



PUBLISHED BY 



Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh 

(SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS), 

WEST CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON; 



AND SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES. 



20M. T5/II/88.— V. T. & S. 



BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG. 

Arranged according to Prices. 

7/6 Seven Shillings and Sixpence each, cloth elegant Illustrated. 

Alice's "Wonderland Birthday Book. By E. Stanley Leathbs and 

0. E. W. Holmes. 
Child Elves. By M. Lepont. 
The Looking-Glass for the Mind. With Cuts by Bewick. An 

Introduction by Charles Welsh. 

6/- KINGSTON'S SERIES OF SIX SHILLING BOOKS. 

Twelve Volumes. Each containing from 450 to 550 pages, well Illustrated by 
the best Artists. Imperial 16mo, cloth elegant, bevelled boards, gilt edges. 
Hurricane Hurry. 

Master of his Fate. By A. Blanche. Trans, by Rev. M. R. Barnard. 
Middy and Ensign. By G. Manvtlle Fenn. 
The Missing Ship ; or, Notes from the Log of the Ouzel Galley. 
Paddy Finn : The Adventures of an Irish Midshipman. 
The Three Midshipmen. 

The Three Lieutenants ; or, Naval Life in the Nineteenth Century. 
The Three Commanders ; or, Active Service Afloat in Modern Times. 
The Three Admirals, and the Adventures of their Young Followers. 
True Blue ; or, a British Seaman of the Old School. 
Will Weatherhelm ; or, The Yarn of an Old Sailor. 
Won from the Waves ; or, The Story of Maiden May. 
Young Buglers : A Tale of the Peninsular War. By G. A. Henty. 

Six Shillings each, cloth elegant, with Illustrations. 
**r The Bird and Insects' Post Office. By R. Bloomfield. (Or paper 
boards, price 3s. Qd.) 
Birdie. By Harriet Childe-Pemberton. 
Child Life in Japan. By Mrs. Chaplin Ayrton. 
Flyaway Fairies and Baby Blossoms. By L. Clarkson. 
Golden Threads from an Ancient Loom. By Lydia Hands. 
His Little Royal Highness. By Ruth Ogden. 
Journey to the Centre of the Earth. By Jules Verne. 
Little Loving Heart's Poem Book. By M. E. Tupper. 
Mabel in Rhymeland. By Edward Holland, CCS. 
Mamma's Bible Stories. 3 Vols., in cardboard box. 
The Secret of the Sands. By Harry Collingwood. 
When I'm a Man. By Alice Weber. 

5/- Five Shillings each, cloth elegant. Illus. by eminent Artists. 

Belle's Pink Boots. By Joanna H. Matthews. Gilt edges. 
Competitors. By Mrs. Seymour. 
The Bay of Wonders. By M. Sullivan. Gilt edges. 
Bethroned ; A Story for Girls. By the Author of " Girlhood Days." 
Extraordinary Nursery Rhymes ; New, yet Old. Small 4to. 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 



GRIFFITH, FAEEAN, OKEDEN AND WELSH. 3 

Five Shillings each — continued. 

Favourite Picture Book (The) and Nursery Companion. Com- 
piled anew by Uncle Charlie. With 450 Illustrations by 
Absolon, Anelat, Bennett, Browne (Phiz), Sir John Gilbert, 
T. Landseer, Leech, Prout, Harrison Weir, and others. 
Medium 4to, cloth elegant (or coloured Illustrations, 10s. 6d). 

%* This may also be had in Two Vols., cloth, price 3*., or coloured 
Illustrations, 5s. ; also in Four parts, in paper boards, fancy 
wrapper, price 1*. each, or coloured Illustrations, 2s. each. 

First Christmas. By Hoffmann. 

From May to Christmas at Thome Hill. By Mrs. D. P. Sandford. 

Gladys Ramsay. By Mrs. M. Douglas. Crown 8vo. 

Goody Two Shoes. In a Fac-simile Cover of the Original, with 
introduction by Charles Welsh. 

TTarria'a PoTiin^f . S The Butterfly's Ball. The Lion's Masquerade, 
narns s uaDiner . j The Elephant » g Ball The Peacock at Home 

Or in Four Parts at Is. each. 
History of the Robins. By Mrs. Trimmer. Small 4to, gilt edges. 
Little Margit ; a Collection of Fairy Tales. By M. A. Hoter. 
Little People of Asia. By Olive Thorne Miller. 
Merry Songs for Little Voices. Words by Mrs. Broderip. Music 

by Thomas Murbt. Fcap. 4to. 
Nothing Venture, Nothing Have. By Anne Beale. 
Patranas; or, Spanish Stories, Legendary and Traditional. 
The Pattern Life. By W. Chatterton Dix. 
Pictures and Songs for Little Children. 
Queen of the Meadow. By R. E. Mack. 
Queer Pets and their Doings. By the author of " Little People 

of Asia." 
Wee Babies. By Ida Waugh and Amy E. Blanchard. 
A Week in Arcadia. By Eleanor Holmes. 

Five Shilling Series of 

TALES OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. 

Crown 8vo, well printed on good paper, and strongly bound in cloth elegant, 
bevelled boards, gilt edges. Each volume contains from 300 to 400 pages 
of solid reading. Fully illustrated by eminent Artists. 

NEW BOOK FOR BOYS. 
Anchor and Laurel. By J. Percy Groves. 
The Briny Deep. By Captain Tom. 
From Cadet to Captain. By J. Perot Groves. 
The Cruise of the Theseus. By Arthur Knight. 
The Duke's Own. By J. Percy Groves. 
Friends though Divided. By Geo. A. Henty. 
Hair-breadth Escapes. By the Rev. H. O. Adams. 
The History of Arthur Penreath. By Commander Lovett- 

Cameron, R.N., C.B., D.C.L. 
Jack's Yarn ; or, Perils in the Pacific. By J. Roberts Brown. 

St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



5/- 



4 BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 

Five Shilling Series — continued. 
Masaniello. By F. Bayford Harrison. 
Mystery of Beechy Grange (The). By the Rev. H. 0. Adams. 
Perils in the Transvaal and Zululand. By the Rev. H. G. Adams. 
Bival Crusoes (The). By W. H. G. Kingston. 
A Search for the Mountain of Gold. By W. Murphy. 
A Soldier Born. By J. Percy Groves. 
In Times of Peril. * By Geo. A. Henty. 

Who did it ? or, Holmwood Priory. By the Rev. H. 0. Adams. 
Who was Philip ? By the Rev. H. 0. Adams. 

THE BOYS' OWN FAVOURITE LIBRARY. 
Twenty-eight Volumes, price Three Shillings and Sixpence each. 

Each volume contains from 300 to 450 pages of solid reading, well 
illustrated hy the best Artists. Crown 8vo, cloth elegant, gilt edges. 
Mark Seaworth. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Hurricane Hurry. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Salt Water. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Out on the Pampas. By G. A. Henty. 
Peter the Whaler. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
The Three Admirals. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Early Start in Life. By E. Marryat Norris. 
Fred Markham in Russia. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
College Days at Oxford. By Rev. H. 0. Adams. 
The Young Franc-Tireurs. By G. A. Henty. 
The Three Midshipmen. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
The Fiery Cross. By Barbara Hutton. 
Our Soldiers. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
The Three Commanders. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
The Three Lieutenants. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Manco, The Peruvian Chief. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Our Sailors. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
John Deane. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

Travel, War, and Shipwreck. By Colonel Parker Gillmore. 
Chums. By Harleigh Severne. 
African Wanderers. By Mrs. R. Lee. 
Tales of the White Cockade. By Barbara Hutton. 
The Missing Ship. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Will Weatherhelm. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
True Blue. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
The North Pole, and How Charlie Wilson discovered it. 
Harty the Wanderer. By Farleigh Owen. 
Self-Conquered. By Bernard Heldmann. 

THE GIRLS' OWN FAVOURITE LIBRARY. 
Twenty-eight Volumes, price Three Shillings & Sixpence each. 

Each volume contains from 300 to 400 pages of solid reading, 
well illustrated by the best Artists. Or. 8vo, cloth elegant, gilt edges. 
Guide, Philosopher, and Friend. By Mrs. Herbert Martin. 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 



GRIFFITH, FAREAN, OEEDEN AND WELSH. 5 

The Girls' Own Favourite Library. 
Three Shillings and Sixpence each — continued. 
Her Title of Honour. By Holme Lee. 
Michaelmas Daisy. By Sarah Doudnet. 
The New Girl. By Mrs. Gelleb. 
The Oak Staircase. By M. and C. Lee. 
For a Dream's Sake. By Mrs. Herbert Martin. 
My Mother's Diamonds. By Maria J. Greer. 
My Sister's Keeper. By Laura M. Lane. 
Shiloh. By W. M. L. Jay. 
Holden with the Cords. By W. M. L. Jay. 
11 Bonnie Lesley." By Mrs. Herbert Martin. - 
Left Alone. By Francis Carr. 

Very Genteel. By the Author of " Mrs. Jerningham's Journal." 
Gladys the Reaper. By Anne Be ale. 
Stephen the Schoolmaster. By Mrs. Gellie (M. E. B.). 
Isabel's Difficulties. By M. R. Carey. 
Court and Cottage. By Mrs. Emma Marshall, 
Sosamend Fane. By M. and 0. Lee. 
Simplicity and Fascination. By Anne Beale. 
Millicent and Her Cousins. By the Hon. A. Bethell. 
Aunt Hetty's Will, By M. M. Pollard. 
Silver Linings. By Mrs. Bray. 
Theodora. By Emilia Marryat Norris. 
Alda Graham. By Emilia Marryat Norris. 
A Wayside Posy. By Fanny Lablache. 
Through a Refiner's Fire. By Eleanor Holmes. 
A Generous Friendship ; or, The Happenings op a New England 

Summer. 
A Country Mouse. By Mrs. Herbert Martin. 

Price Three Shillings and Sixpence each 3/g 

Elegantly bound, and illustrated by the best Authors. 
Bird and Insects' Post Giiice (The). By Robert Bloomfield. 
Crown 4to, paper boards, with Chromo side (or cloth elegant, 6s.) 
Bunch of Berries (A), and the Diversions thereof. By Leader 

Scott. 
Castles and their Heroes. By Barbara Hutton. 
Child Pictures from Dickens. Illustrated. 
Clement's Trial and Victory. By M. E. B. (Mrs. Gellte). 
Daisy Days; a Colour Book for Children. By Mrs. A. M. Clausen. 
Every-day Life in Our Public Schools. By Chas. Eyre Pascoe. 
In Time of War. By Jas. F. Cobb. 
Joachim's Spectacles. By M. and C. Lee. 
Lee (Mrs.) Anecdotes of the Habits and Instincts of Animals. 
„ Anecdotes of the Habits and Instincts of Birds, Reptile*, 

and Fishes. 
,, Adventures in Australia. 

St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



BOOKS FOE THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 



^l* 3 Three Shillings and Sixpence each — continued. 

Lily and Her Brothers. By C. E. L. 
Little Chicks and Bahy Tricks. By Ida Waugh. 
Little May's Friend. By Annie Whittem. 
The Little Wonderbox. By Jean Ingelow. A series of Six Vols. 

Price 6d. each. 
Lost in Ceylon. By W. Dalton. 
My Friend and My Enemy. By Paul Blake. 
Nimpo's Troubles. By Olive Thorne Miller. 
Old Corner Annual for 1889. Illustrated. 
Reached at Last. By R. H. Cutter. 
Sermons for Children. By A. De Coppet. 
Talks about Plants. By Mrs. Lankester. 
Two Stories of Two. By Stella Austin. 
Under the Mistletoe. By Lizzie Lawson and R. E. Mack. 4 to, 

boards. 
Unwelcome Guest. By Esme Stuart. 
The War Tiger. By W. Dalton. 
The White Elephant. By W. Dalton. 



THE "BUNCHY" SERIES OF HALF-CROWN BOOKS. 

Crown $vo. Cloth elegant, bevelled boards, gilt edges, fully Illustrated 
by the best Artists. 
African Pets. By F. Clinton Parry. 
Boy Slave in Bokhara. By David Ker. 
Bunchy. By E. 0. Phillips. 
Bryan and Katie. By Annette Lyster. 
Cast Adrift : the Story of a Waif. By Mrs. H. H. Martin. 
Daring Voyage across the Atlantic. By the Brothers Andrews. 
Dolly, Dear ! By Mary E. Gellie. 
Every Inch a King. By Mrs. J. Worthington Bliss. 
Family Feats. By Mrs. R. M. Bray. 
Fearless Frank. By Mary E. Gellie. 
A Gem of an Aunt. By Mrs. Gellie (M. E. B.). 
Gerty and May. By the Author of "Our White Violet." 
Grandfather. By E. C. Phillips, Author of "Bunchy." 
Great and Small. By Miss Harriet Poole. 
Growing TJp. By Jennett Humphreys. 
Hilda and Her Doll. By E. 0. Phillips. 
House on the Bridge. By 0. E. Bowen. 
Hugh's Sacrifice. By Cecil Marry at Norris. 
Mischievous Jack. By 0. E. L. 
Nora's Trust. By Mrs. Gellie (M. E. B.). 
Our Auhrey. By E. C. Phillips. 
Punch. By E. C. Phillips. 
St. Aubyn's Laddie. By E. C. Phillips. 
Ten of Them. By Mrs. R. M. Bray. 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 



GEIFFITH, FABRAN, OKEDEN AND WELSH. 7 

Two Shillings and Sixpence each — continued. 

" Those Unlucky Twins ! " By Annette Lyster. 

Two Rose Trees. By Mrs. Minnie Douglas. 

The Venturesome Twins. By Mrs. Gellie. Crown 8vo. 

Ways and Tricks of Animals. By Mary Hooper. 

We Four. By Mrs. R. M. Brat. 

Wild Horseman of the Pampas. By David Ker. 

Boy's Own Toy Maker (The) : A Practical Illustrated Guide to the 

useful employment of Leisure Hours. By E. Landells. 
Choice Extracts from the Standard Authors. By the Editor of 

" Poetry for the Young." 3 vols. (2s. 6d. each.) 
Cruise of Ulysses and His Men (The) ; or, Tales and Adventures 

from the Odyssey, for Boys and Girls. By G. M. Bell. 
Girl's Own Toy Maker (The), and Book of Recreation. By E. 

and A. Landells. With 200 Illustrations. 
Goody Two Shoes. A Reprint of the Original Edition, with 

Introduction by Ohas. Welsh. 
Holly Berries. By Amy E. Blanchard. Coloured Illustrations 

by Ida Waugh. 4to boards. 
Ice Maiden and other Stories. By Hans Christian Andersen. 
Lesson Notes. By Stafford C. Northcote. 
Little Child's Fable Book. Arranged Progressively in One, Two, 

and Three Syllables. 16 Pages, Illustrated. Cheap Edition. 
Little Gipsy. By Elie Sauvage. Cheaper Edition. 
Little Pilgrim (The). Illustrated by Helen Petrie. 
Model Yachts, and Model Yacht Sailing: How to Build, Rig 

and Sail a Self-acting Model Yacht. By J as. E. Walton, 

V.M.Y.C. Fcap. 4to, with 58 Woodcuts. 
My Own Dolly. By Amy Blanchard and Ida Waugh. 
Restful Work for Youthful Hands. By Miss Caulfield. 
Sea and Sky. By J. R. Blakiston, M.A. Suitable for young 

people. Profusely Illustrated, and contains a Coloured Atlas 

of the Phenomena of Sea and Sky. 



2/6 



Two Shillings and Sixpence, cloth elegant, with Illustra- 
tions iy Harrison Weir and other Eminent Artists. 

Animals and their Social Powers. By Mart Turner-Andrewes. 

A Week by Themselves. By Emilia" Marrtat Norris. 

Babies' Crawling Rugs, and How to Make them. By Emma S. 
Windsor. 

Christmas Box. Being tho Six Volumes of tho Christmas Stocking 
Series in one. 

Christmas Roses. By Lizzie Lawson and R. E. Mack. 4to, 
boards. 

Christmas Tree Fairy. By R. E. Mack and Mrs. L. Mack. 

St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



8 BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 

Two Shillings and Sixpence each — continued. 

Funny Fables for Little Folks. 
Granny* s Story Box. With 20 Engravings. 

Jack Frost and Betty Snow ; Tales for Wintry Nights and Rainy Days. 
London Cries. By Luke Limner. 
Madelon. By Esther Carr. 

Odd Stories about Animals : told in Short and Easy Words. 
Restful Work for Youthful Hands. By S. F. A. Caulfield. 
Secret of Wrexford (The). By Esther Carr. 
Snowed Up. By Emilia Marrtat Norris. 

The Story of the Mermaiden ; adapted from the German of Hans 
Andersen by E. Ashe. Illustrated by Laura W. Trowbridge. 
Tales from Catland. Dedicated to the Young Kittens of England. 
Talking Bird (The). By M. and E. Kirbt. 
Three Nights. By Cecil Marryat Norris. 
Tiny Stories for Tiny Readers in Tiny Words. 
Trottie's Story Book : True Tales in Short Words and Large Type. 
Tuppy; or, The Autobiography op a Donkey. 
Wandering Blindfold; or, A Boy's Troubles. By Mary Albert. 

NEW ILLUSTRATED QUARTO GIFT BOOKS. 
Wreck of Hesperus. By H. W. Longfellow. Small quarto, cloth 
bevelled, stamped in gold and colour. 

Uniform with the above. 

The Village Blacksmith. | Keble's Evening Hymn. 

The Sweet By-and-Bye. 

COMICAL PICTURE BOOKS. 

Two Shillings and Sixpence each, fancy hoards. 
Adventures of the Pig Family, The. By Arthur S. Gibson. 

Sixteen pages Illustrations, oblong 4to, boards. 

The March Hares and their friends. Uniform with the above. 
By the same author. 

The following have Coloured Plates. 

English Struwwelpeter (The) : or Pretty Stories and Funny 
Pictures for Little Children. After the celebrated German 
Work of Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann. Thirtieth Edition. Twenty- 
four pages of Illustrations (or mounted on linen, 55.). 

Funny Picture Book (The); or, 25 Funny Little Lessons. A 
free Translation from the German of " Der Kleine ABO 

SCHUTZE." 

In the Land of Nod ; a Fancy Story. By A. C. Marzath. 

Loves of Tom Tucker and Little Bo-Peep. Written and Illus- 

trated by Thomas Hood. 
Pictures and Fun. Mirth and Fun for Old and Young. 
Spectropia ; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions, showing Ghosts 

everywhere, and of any colour. By J. H. Brown. 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 



GRIFFITH, FAEEAN, OKEDEN AND WELSH. 



9 



THE HOLIDAY LIBEAEY. 

A Series of 15 Volumes for Boys and Girls, well illustrated, and bound in cloth, 
with elegant design printed in gold and colours, gilt edges. The size is 
Foolscap 8vo, and as each volume contains upwards of 300 pages of 
interesting tales of all descriptions, they form one of the most attractive 
and saleable series in the market. 

Price Two Shillings, each volume containing Two Tales, 

well Illustrated. 



2/- 



VoL I 



m. 



LIST OF BOOKS 
( Sunny Days, 
} Wrecked, Not Lost. 

(Disoontented Children. 
Holidays among Moun- 
tains. 
Adrift on the Sea. 
Hofer the Tyrolese. 
Alice and Beatrice. 
Julia Maitland. 
Among the Brigands. 
Hero of Brittany. 



IV. 
V. 



VI. 



S Gat and Dog. 
Miller. 



IN THE 
vol. vni. 

„ IX. 

X. 

„ XI. 

„ xn. 

,. XIII. 



SERIES. 
( Children's Pionio. 
( Holiday Tales. 
( Christian Elliott. 
( Stolen Cherries. 
i Harry at School. 
j Claudine. 
X Our White Violet 
\ Fickle Flora. 
j William Tell. 
( Paul Howard's Captivity. 
' Amy's Wish. 

New Baby. 

Neptune. 

Crib and Fly. 
j What became of Tommy 
( Geoffrey's Great Fault. 

Illustrated. 



\ Johnny anner. -o-prr 

(Children of the Parson- 
„ VIlJ age. xv 

(Grandmamma's Relios 

Two Shillings, cloth elegant, 
Captain Fortescue's Handful. By C. Marryat Norris. 
Children's Gallery. Four Parts, price 2s. each. 
Daily Thoughts of Comfort. By E. G. 
Elsie Dinsmore "> 

Elsie's Girlhood > By Martha Farquharson. 
Elsie's Holidays) 

A Far-away Cousin. By K. D. Cornish. 
How to Make Dolls 5 Furniture and to Furnish a Doll's House. 

With 70 Illustrations. Small 4to. 
Illustrated Paper Model Maker. By E. Landells. In envelope. 
Lasses and Lads. By Theo. Gift. Illustrated by Edith Stanley 

Berkeley. 
Mademoiselle's Story. By Madame Ryffel. . 
Mamma's Bible Stories. First Series. For Her Little Boys 

and Girls. 
Mamma's Bible Stories. Second Series. 
Mamma's Bible Stories. Third Series. Illustrated by Stanley 

Berkeley. The three Volumes can be had in a handsome 

case. Price 6s. 
Seeking His Fortune. Uniform in size and price with above. 
Seven of Us. Illustrated by Fannie Moody, Christine and 

Gertrude Demain Hammond. 
Two and Two ; or, French and English. By Mrs. Seymour. 
Wonders of Home, in Eleven Stories (The). By Grandfather Grey. 
Young Vocalist (The). Cloth boards. (Or paper, Is.) 

St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



10 BOOKS FOB THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 

Price One Shilling and Sixpence each. 

Baby's First Book. By Uncle Charlie. Paper boards, Is. 6d. 

Babies' Museum (The). By Uncle Charlie. Paper boards, Is. 6d. 

Children's Daily Help. By E. G. Bevelled boards, gilt edges. 

Christmas Carols. For Children in Church, at Home, and in 
School. Words by Mrs. Hernaman, and Music by Alfred 
Redhead. Twenty-two Carols. Price l\d. each ; or complete 
in paper cover, price Is. 6d. each in Two Volumes ; or in One 
Vol. , cloth, price 3s. 6d. The Words only, price Id. for each 
Series. List of the Carols : — 
1. Jesus in the Manger, 



2. The Birthday of Birthdays. 

3. The Welcome Home. 

4. Carol to Jesus Sleeping. 
6. The Lambs in the Field. 

6. Carol for the Children of Jesus. 

7. Christmas Songs. 

8. Round about the Christmas Tree. 

9. Old Father Christmas. 

10. We'll Gather round the Fire. 

11. Carol we high. 



12. The Prinoe of Peace. 

13. Carol for Christmas Eve. 

14. The Babe of Bethlehem. 

15. The King in the Stable. 

16. The Infant Jesus. 

17. The Holy Innocents. 

18. Epiphany. 

19. A Merry Christmas. 

20. The Christmas Party. 

21. Light and Love. 

22. The Christmas Stooking. 



Directory of Girls' Societies, Clubs, and Unions. Conducted on 

unprofessional principles. By S. F. A. Caulfield. 
Eivals of the Cornfield. By the Author of " Genevieve's Story. " 
Taking Tales. In Plain Language and large Type. Four vols. 
May also be had in 2 vols., 3s. 6d. each ; and in 21 parts, cl. limp, price 6d. each. 



ANGELO SERIES OF EIGHTEENPENNY BOOKS. 

Square 16mo. Cloth elegant, fully Illustrated. 

Angelo; or, The Pine Forest in the Alps. By Geraldinb 

E. Jewsbury. 5th Thousand. 
Aunt Annette's Stories to Ada. By Annette A. Salaman. 
Brave Nelly; or, Weak Hands and a Willing Heart. By 

M. E. B. (Mrs. Gellie). 5th Thousand. 
Featherland; or, How the Birds Lived at Greenlawn. By 

G. M. Fenn. 4th Thousand. 
Humble Life : A Tale of Humble Homes. By the Author of 

" Gerty and May," &c. 
Kingston's (W. H. 0.) Child of the Wreck ; or, The Loss op 

the Royal George. 
Lee's (Mrs. E.) Playing at Settlers ; or, The Fagot House. 

— Twelve Stories of the Sayings and Doings of Animals. 

Little Lisette, the Orphan op Alsace. By M. E. B. (Mrs. Gellie). 
Live Toys ; or, Anecdotes op our Four-Legged and other Pets. 

By Emma Davenport. 
Long Evenings ; or, Stories por my Little Friends. By Emilia 

Marryat. 
Three Wishes (The). By Mrs. Gellie (M. E. B.). 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 



GRIFFITH, FAEEAN, OKEDEN AND WELSH. 11 

The CHERRY SERIES of EIGHTEENPENNY BOOKS. 

PRESENTS AND PRIZES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 1/6 

Thirty- six volumes, well illustrated, small 8vo, clearly printed on 
good paper, and strongly bound in elegant cloth boards, gilt edges. 
Adventures in Fanti-land. By Mrs. R. Lee. 
African Cruiser (The). By S. Whitchurch Sadler. 
Always Happy ; or, Anecdotes of Felix and his Sister. 
Aunt Mary's Bran Pie. By the Author of " St. OlaveV 
Battle and Victory. By C. E. Bowen. 
A Child's Influence. By Lisa Lockyer. 
Constance and Nellie. By Emma Davenport. 
Corner Cottage, and its Inmates. By Frances Osborne. 
Distant Homes, By Mrs. J. E. Aylmer. 
Father Time's Story Book. By Kathleen Knox. 
From Peasant to Prince. By Mrs. Pietzker. 
Girlhood Days. By Mrs. Seymour. 
Good in Everything. By Mrs. Barwell. 
Granny's Wonderful Chair. By B. F. Browne. 
Happy Holidays. By Emma Davenport. 
Happy Home. By Lady Lushington. 
The Heroic Wife. By W. H. G. Kingston. 
Helen in Switzerland. By Lady Lushington. 
Holidays Ahroad ; or, Eight at Last. By Emma Davenport. 
Lucy's Campaign. By M. and C. Lee. 
Lost in the Jungle. By Augusta Marry at. 
Louisa Broadhurst. By A. Milner. 
Master Bobhy. 
Mudge and Her Chicks. 

My Grandmother's Budget. By Mrs. Brodertp. 
Our Birthdays. By Emma Davenport. 
Our Home in the Marshland. By E. L. F. 
Parted. By N. D'Anvers. 
Pictures of Girl Life. By C. A. Howell. 
School Days in Paris. By M. S. Jeune. 
Starlight Stories. By Fanny Lablache. 
Sunnyland Stories. By the Author of " St. Olave's." 
Talent and Tatters. 

Tittle-Tattle : and other Stories for Children. 
Vicar of Wakefield (The). 
Willie's Victory. 

St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



12 BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 

THE HAWTHORN SERIES OF SHILLING BOOKS. 

PRESENTS AND PRIZES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

Forty-two volumes, well illustrated, small 8vo, clearly printed on good paper, 
and strongly bound in elegant cloth boards. 

Adrift on the Sea. By E. M. Norris. 

Alice and Beatrice. By Grandmamma. 

Among the Brigands. By 0. E. Bowen. 

Amy's Wish : A Fairy Tale. By Mr. G. Tyler. 

Cat and Dog; or, Puss and the Captain. 

Children of the Parsonage. By the Author of "Gerty and May." 

Children's Picnic (The). By E. Marry at Norris. 

Christian Elliott ; or, Mrs. Danver's Prize. By L. N. Comyn. 

Claudine ; or, Humility the Basis of all the Virtues. 

Crib and Fly : the Story of Two Terriers. 

Daughter of a Genius (The). By Mrs. Hofland. 

Discontented Children (The). By M. and E. Kirby. 

Ellen, the Teacher. By Mrs. Hofland. 

Eskdale Herd Boy (The). By Lady Stoddart. 

Fickle Flora and her Seaside Friends. By Emma Davenport. 

Geoffrey's Great Fault, By E. Marryat Norris. 

Grandmamma's Relics. By C. E. Bowen. 

Harry at School. A Story for Boys. By E. Marryat Norris. 

Hero of Brittany (The) ; or, The Story of Bertrand du Guesclin. 

History of the Robins (The). By Mrs. Trimmer. 

Hofer, the Tyrolese. By the Author of "William Tell." 

Holiday Tales. By Florence Wilford. 

Holidays among the Mountains. By M. Betham Edwards. 

Johnny Miller. By Felix Weiss. 

Julia Maitland. By M. and E. Kirby. 

Life and Perambulations of a Mouse (The). 

Memoir of Bob, the Spotted Terrier. 

Mrs. Leicester's School. By Charles and Mary Lamb. 

Neptune : The Autobiography of a Newfoundland Dog. 

Never Wrong; or, The Young Disputant; and It was only in Fun. 

New Baby (The). By the Author of " Our White Violet." 

Our White Violet. By the Author of " Gerty and May." 

Paul Howard's Captivity. By E. Marryat Norris. 

Right and Wrong. By the Author of " Always Happy." 

Scottish Orphans (The). By Lady Stoddart. 

Son of a Genius (The). By Mrs. Hofland. 

Stolen Cherries. (The) ; or Tell the Truth at once. 

Sunny Days. By the Author of "Our White Violet:" 

Theodore ; or the Crusaders. By Mrs.. Hofland. 

What became of Tommy. By E. Marryat Norris. 

William Tell, the Patriot of Switzerland. By Florian. 

Wrecked, not Lost. By the Hon. Mrs. Dundas. 

Easy Reading for Little Readers. Paper Boards. 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and "Welsh, 



GBIFFITH, FABRAN, OKEDEN AND WELSH. 13 

Price One Shilling each — continued. 

Fragments of Knowledge for Little Folk. Paper Boards. 
The Nursery Companion. Paper Boards. 
The Picturesque Primer. Paper Boards. 

These Four Volumes contain about 450 pictures ; each one being complete in itself, and 
bound in an attractive paper cover, in boards (also with coloured Illustrations, 2s.) 

The Four Volumes bound together form the " Favourite Picture Book," bound in cloth, 
price 5s., or coloured Illustrations, gilt edges, 10s. 6d. 

Christmas in Many Lands. By Florence Scannell. Illustrated 
by Edith Scannell. 
I. Christmas in England. 



The Highwayman. 
II. Christmas in France. 
Jean Noel, 



III. Christmas in Germany. 

Golden Wings. 

IV. Christmas in Italy. 

The Pifferari, 



The Butterfly's Ball (reproduced). With an Introduction by Chas. 

The Elephant's Ball. Ditto. [Welsh. 

The Lion's Masquerade. Ditto. 

The Peacock at Home. Ditto. 

The Child's Duty. 

Cock Robin. Sewed. 

Courtship of Jenny Wren. Sewed. 



Goody Two Shoes. Cloth. 



House that Jack Built. Sewed. 
Mr. Fox's Pinch for Pride. 
Three Fairy Tales. By Pan. 
Young Communicant's Manual. 



Baby's First Book. By Uncle Charlie. (Or paper boards, Is. 6d.) 
Babies' Museum (The) : or, Rhymes, Jingles, and Ditties for 

the Nursery. By Uncle Charlie. Fully Illustrated. 

(Or paper boards, Is. 6d.) 
Bible Lilies. Scripture Selections for Morning and Evening. 
Cowslip (The). Fully Illustrated cloth, Is. plain. 
Cyclist Road Book. By C. Spencer. (Or cloth Is. 6d.) 
Daisy (The). Fully Illustrated cloth, Is. plain. 
Dame Partlett's Farm, An Account of the Riches she obtained 

by Industry, &c. Coloured Illustrations, sewed. 
Fairy Folk. By E. Lecky. 
Fairy Gifts : or, a Wallet of Wonders. By Kathleen Knox. 

Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. Fancy boards. 
Fairy Land. By the late Thomas and Jane Hood. Fancy boards. 
Female Christian Names, and their Teachings. A Gift Book for 

Girls. By Mary E. Bromfield. Gilt edges. 
Flowers of Grace. Scripture Selections for every day.[STRUTT, R.B.A. 
He Loveth All. Illustrated by Rosa Jameson and Alfred W. 
Hand Shadows, to be thrown upon the Wall. Novel and amusing 

figures formed by the hand. By Henry Bursill. Two Series 

in one. (Or coloured Illustrations, Is. 6d.) 
Lufness. A Sequel to the Wreck. By Ethel. 
Nine Lives of a Cat (The) : a Tale of Wonder. Written and Illus- 
trated by C. H. Bennett. 24 Coloured Engravings, sewed. 
Peter Piper. Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pbo- 

nunciatton. Coloured Illustrations, sewed. 

St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



14 BOOKS FOE THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 

One Shilling each — continued. 
Playmates. ByTHEO. Gift. Illustrated by Florence Maplestone. 
Primrose Pilgrimage (The) : a Woodland Story. By M. Betham 

Edwards. Illustrated by Macquoid. Sewed. 
Rhymes and Pictures about Bread, Tea, Sugar, Cotton, Coals, 

and Gold. By William Newman. Seventy -two Illustrations. 

Price Is. plain ; 2s. 6d. coloured. 
Eosebuds and Promises. A Little Book of Scripture Texts. 
Short and Simple Prayers, with Hymns for the Use of 

Children. By the Author of " Mamma's Bible Stories." Cloth. 
Short Stories for Children about Animals. In Words of One 

Syllable. Fully Illustrated by Harrison Weir. 
Upside Down ; or, Turnover Traits. By Thomas Hood. 
Whittington and his Cat. Coloured Illustrations, sewed. 
Wreck. By Ethel. 
Young Vocalist (The). A Collection of Twelve Songs, each with 

an Accompaniment for the Pianoforte. By Mrs. Mounsey 

Bartholomew. (Or bound in cloth, price 2s.) 



Price 9d. each, elegantly bound in Paper Boards with 
Covers in Chromo- lithography. 

THE TINY NATURAL HISTORY SERIES 

OF STORY BOOKS ABOUT ANIMALS FOR LITTLE READERS. 



ALL PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED BY THE BEST ARTISTS. 



Especially adapted for School Prizes and Rewards. In one way or another, the hooks 
either impart knowledge about Animals, or inculcate the desirableness of treating 
them with kindness. 



Little Nellie's Bird Cage. By Mrs. 
R. Lee, Author of "The African 
Wanderers," &c. 

The Tiny Menagerie, By Mrs. R. Lee, 
Author of "The African Wan- 
derers," &c. 

The Dog Postman. By the Author of 
" Odd Stories." 

The Mischievous Monkey. By the 
Author of " Odd Stories." 

Lily's Letters from the Farm, By 
Mary Hooper, Author of " Ways 
and Tricks of Animals." 

Our Dog Prin. By Mary Hooper, 
Author of "Ways and Tricks of 
Animals." 



Little Neddie' 8 Menagerie. By Mrs. 
R. Lee, Author of " The African 
Wanderers," &c. 

Frolicsome Frisk and his Frienrs. 
By the Author of " Trottie s 
Story Book." 

Wise Birds and Clever Bogs, By the 
Author of "Tuppy," "Thy 
Stories," &e. 

Artful Pussy. By the Author of " Odd 
Stories," &c. 

The Pet Pony, By the Author of 
" Trottie's Story Book." 

Bow Wow Bobby. By the Author of 
" Tuppy," " Odd Stories," &c. 



The above 12 vols, in Cardboard Box with Picture Top, price 9s. 
Only a Kitten. By Maud Randall. 

Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 



GRIFFITH, FARRAN, OKEDEN AND WELSH. 15 



THE OLD CORNER SERIES. 

With entirely Original Illustrations by famous Artists, each contain- 6d. 
ing 24 pp. Coloured Frontispiece and Cover. Price 6d. each. 

1. Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog. Illustrated by Will Gibbons. 

2. Comic Adventures of Dame Trot and her Cat. Illustrated by Will Gibbons. 

3. Dick Whittington and his Cat. Illustrated by John Proctor. 

4. Cock Robin. Illustrated by E. Morant-Cox. 

5. The Old Woman and her Pig. Illustrated by A. Chasemore. 

6. The History of the House that Jack Built. Illustrated by E. Morant-Cox. 

In 22 Parts, cloth limp, fancy binding, with Chromo on side 

Price 6d. each. 

TAKING TALES FOR COTTAGE HOMES. 

Fully illustrated. 
N.B. — Each Tale is Illustrated and complete in itself, 

1. The Miller of Hillbrook : a Rural Tale. 

2. Tom Trueman: a Sailor in a Merchantman 

3. Michael Hale and His Family in Canada. 

4. John Armstrong, the Soldier. 

5. Joseph Rudge, the Australian Shepherd. 

6. Life Underground; or, Dick the Colliery Boy. 

7. Life on the Coast ; or, the Little Fisher Girl. 

8. Adventures of Two Orphans in London. 

9. Early Days on Board a Man-of-War. 

10. Walter, the Foundling : a Tale of Olden Times. 

11. The Tenants of Sunnyside Farm. 

12. Holmwood; or, the .New Zealand Settler. 

13. A Bit of Fun, and what it Cost. 

14. Sweethearts : a Tale of Tillage Life. 

15. Helpful Sam. By M. A. B. 

16. Little Pretty. By P. Bayford Harrison. 

17. A Wise Woman. By F. Bayford Harrison. 

18. Saturday Night. By F. Bayford Harrison. 

19. Second Best. By F. Bayford Harrison. 

20. Little Betsy. By Mrs. E. Relton. 

21. Louie White's Hop-picking. By Miss Jenner. 

22. Ellen Morris. By Ethel. 
N.B. — The first Twelve parts may also be had in 4 volumes, Is. 6d. 

each vol., and 2 volumes, 3s. 6d. each vol. 

THE PRIZE STORY BOOK SERIES. 

A Series of Six elegant little books for children from five to seven 
years of age, price 6d. each. 



1. The Sand Cave, 

2. The Picnic. 

3. So-Fat and Mew-Mew at Home, 



4. So-Fat and Mew-Mew away from 

Home. 

5. The Birthday. 

6. The Robins. 



THE CHRISTMAS STOCKING SERIES. 

A new Illustrated Series of Gift Books, with coloured cover and 
Frontispiece. Six volumes, price 6d. each. 



The Christmas Stocking. 
From Santa Claus. 
Under the Christmas Tree. 



Kitty Clover. 
Robin Redbreast. 
Twinkle, Twinkle. 



Or complete in one Volume entitled Christmas Box, price 2s. 6d. 
St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 



16 BOOKS FOE THE YOUNG PUBLISHED BY 



OTJK BOYS' LITTLE LIBRARY. 

PICTURES AND READING FOR LITTLE FOLK. 

A Series of Twelve elegant little volumes in Cloth extra, with Picture 
on front, price 6d. each. The 12 vols, in a Box, price 6s. Every 
page is Illustrated. 
Tney are especially suited for School Prizes and Rewards. 



1. Papa's Pretty Gift Book. 

2. Mamma's Pretty Gift Book. 

3. Neddy's Picture Story Book. 

4. Stories for Play Time, 

5. The Christmas Gift Book. 

6. The Prize Picture Book. 



7. Little Tommy's Story Book. 

8. Bright Picture Pages. 

9. My Little Boy's Story Book. 

10. "What Santa Claus gave me. 

11. Tiny Stories for Tiny Boys. 

12. Little Boy Blue's Picture Book. 



OUR GIRLS' LITTLE LIBRARY. 

PICTURES AND READING FOR LITTLE FOLK. 

A Series of Twelve elegant little volumes in Cloth, with Picture on 
front, price 6d. each. The 12 vols, in Box, price 6s. Every 
page is Illustrated. 
They are especially suited for School Prizes and Rewards. 

1, Nellie's Picture Stories. 

2. Stories and Pictures for Little 



Troublesome. 

3. Little Trotabout's Picture Stories. 

4. Birdie's Scrap Book, 

5. Stories for Little Curly Locks. 

6. Bright Pictures for Roguish Eyes. 



7. Daisy's Picture Album. 

8. Wee-Wee Stories for Wee-Wee 
Girls. 

9. May's Little Story Book. 

10. Gipsy's Favourite Companion. 

11. My Own Story Book. 

12. Pretty Pet's Gift Book. 



THE BLUE BELL SERIES. 

A new Illustrated Series of Beautiful Gift Books, containing numerous 
Pictures and Coloured Plates in each. Six vols., price id. each. 



Little Blue Bell. 
Oranges and Lemons. 
May-time and Play-time. 



Sweet as Honey. 

Good as Gold. 

Summer Days and Winter Ways. 



THE FOURPENNY TOY BOOK SERIES. 

Uniform in size with the " Blue Bell " Series. 
Marmaduke Multiply' s Merry Method of making Minor Mathematicians. 

In 3 Yols., Miniature 4to, 24 pp. each. Coloured Cover and Frontispiece. 

OUR FATHER'S GIFTS. 

A Series of Four beautiful little Boohs of Scripture Texts for one 

month. Illustrated, 48mo size, 4 Vols. 4o?. each. 
His Loving-kindnesses. His Testimonies. 

His Good Promises. His Covenants. 



Griffith, Faeran, Okedbn and Welsh. $ 



^ 


^ 


<D 


k ^ <0 


'/- 


t< 




r O v c 


' O 





*o 


O 1 


$ 




V * ' 




s* 










A ^O / 



0o 

















x ^ 






.0 



m 










'O 



oo 



': 



5 oA CP*. * Q 






^ * < r. s ^ a 



* . <*> 



& 



S) 




tf ^ 



x 0c ^ 






^ ^ ^^ 



qK 






L V 










& * AWA. ^ ** 

















y« ~ % >- ■& 



.^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

llllllllliil, 

018 499 578 5 






